Ken Sakata Quit Medicine to Make Pants
Former surgeon Ken Sakata, founder of the brand Front Office, talks with Dialectic in Tokyo about leaving medicine for fashion, the hard economics of a clothing label, and whether he is a great designer or a great explainer.
The gist
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Sakata says fashion is a tough business because you pay for clothes about nine months before any money might come back.
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After tariffs on his China-made jacket jumped from 0% to 135% in a week, he moved production to Japan, where trousers cost 3x more.
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For his first Paris show, he says the best case is 30% of designs selling to shops; making all 18 pieces would cost $258,000.
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Sakata wonders if he is meant to be the Anthony Bourdain of fashion, world class at explaining clothes, rather than a great designer.
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He recommends Kenya Hara's Designing Design for thinking about design as ideas and problem solving, and Walter Murch's editing book for creative decision-making.
"There's this book called Designing Design by Kenya Hara. That is the book if you want to understand problem solving... Incredible way of thinking, very abstract, just in the idea space. This is not a book about execution at all. It's just about ideas, which is, I think, if you..."
▶ Play at 2:18:08What they recommend · 2 picks
"There's this book called Designing Design by Kenya Hara. That is the book if you want to understand problem solving... Incredible way of thinking, very abstract, just in the ide..."
"For me the most impactful book for thinking is this book on film editing by Walter Murch... It's called The Conversations. I read that in uni because I found it in the library, ..."
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