visvim FW23 Humbly Offers Peerless Workwear
visvim always does it right. As the longrunning Japanese luxe-workwear brand turns 23, it continues to deliver the quiet quality that made it famous and Fall/Winter 2023 epitomizes visvim's craft-first ethos.
Long-since pigeonholed overseas as a brand best-known for its moccasin-inspired shoes and workwear boots, visvim is much more than the sum of its parts.
Admittedly, I used to scoff at founder Hiroki Nakamura's flowery descriptions of his label's clothes but I became a convert once I actually got up close with the goods at a showroom, back with visvim used to preview its seasonal collections in New York.
Therein, I beheld things that only visvim can do: jaw-dropping mud-dyed military parkas, yukata coats patterned by generational Japanese craftsmen, "dry" denim created through a time-intensive weaving and treatment process.
That's the actual magic of visvim. It's perhaps the only label doing true luxury workwear, treating ordinary-looking clothing with the same exquisite techniques typically reserved for couture.
To be sure, not everything visvim makes is to that standard and not everything visvim makes is worth waxing poetic about.
Not that I have anything against the garment-dyed hoodies, raw denim jeans, merino wool sportswear, and benchmade footwear, still slowly made by cobblers in China to this day. It's just that that's the stuff that any brand could theoretically do and sell for less than visvim.
Even still, though, visvim has the scale to customize the jersey utilized for its T-shirts and hoodies to spec, and color it with vegetable, indigo, and mud dye, so it's all pretty impressive. All I'm saying: you're paying visvim prices for storytelling, vision, presentation and, in the right cases, truly gorgeous clothes.
That's why visvim, a brand that primarily sells garments inspired by vintage militaria and workwear, is respected by even folks well-versed in artisanal fare, like Britain's Blue Mountain School and the owner of INK Hong Kong.
Face value, Fall/Winter 2023 is just another offering from visvim, with attractive insulator jackets, shop coats, knit sweaters, and hard-wearing boots. But, like all of its other collections, visvim FW23 rewards those willing to dig deep (and pay up).
