At Home, SETCHU’s Satoshi Kuwata Stands Tall As One of His Time’s Great Sartorial Architects

Inspired by Greenland’s vastness and the quiet beauty of life unfolding under Arctic conditions, the Japanese designer, and proud fisherman, opened the doors of his new Milan headquarters to unveil his Autumn/Winter 26 collection.

In the months leading up to SETCHU’s first show from its new headquarters in Milan, Satoshi Kuwata likely had the feeling he was about to take audiences on a journey very few would even think of embarking on. After all, how often do we talk about Greenland, a country he’s grown so fondly of over the past 15 years? Yet as it turns out, Greenland might well be one of the hottest topics in the world right now, its unsettled future splashed across the news. Still, the pull for the Japanese designer was deeply personal: a long-held dream of meeting Arctic trout in their natural habitat.

His passion for fishing, alongside the cathartic experience of immersing himself in Arctic silence, Greenland’s vast nothingness, and the richness of its local nature and cultural reverence for the land – a parallel he draws with his Japanese roots – became the starting points for a collection that’s already among the most talked about of the season. Welcoming friends and family of the brand to its new headquarters in Milan, Kuwata kicked things off with a speech, bringing audiences close to his creative process as he reached for bags sitting atop a table at the centre of the room. 

In the blink of an eye, like a piece of origami, he unfolded a navy trench coat from one bag, then a skirt-and-top set from another. A feat of intricate engineering, the collection channels Kuwata’s taste for the obtuse through exquisite tailoring lifted from the Savile Row playbook he commands, alongside Frankenstein-esque puffer jackets and deconstructed forms – from asymmetric skirts and jackets to oversized shirts. A fresh take on technical workwear, it places construction front and centre as the 2023 LVMH Prize for Young Designers winner defies convention and secures his position as a true mastermind of garment reinvention.