This 10-Person Japanese Brand Gets “Good” Clothing Right
NICENESS, the Tokyo-based label founded in 2017 by Hirokazu Goh, makes incredibly good clothes. Yet it’s also unlike almost any other Japanese brand known for doing the same. “Fabrics and craftsmanship are extremely important to us, but we never want it to feel heavy or overly serious,” says Takahiro Ito, one of the three creatives helming NICENESS. For them, obsessive commitment to high-quality garments isn’t ceremonial — it’s meant to be fun. “Everything we do ultimately serves the pleasure of wearing our clothes.”
That sense of playfulness resonates through NICENESS’ huge and wildly eclectic collections. For Spring/Summer 2026, “Folklash,” the label draws on subcultures as disparate as 1950s rockabilly, 1970s glam and 1990s alternative dance. These references are mixed with various traditional materials, including Kurume Kasuri — an age-old Japanese fabric produced in Kurume, the city it’s named for, through a complex 30-step process — to create loose-fitting, richly textured silhouettes that range from louche suiting to luxurious staples. There’s a Himalayan sheepskin riders jacket, an Italian-leather engineer boot, a stencil-print helmet bag, a balloon jacket in heavily dyed technical wool, and roughly a hundred more distinct pieces, all wearable and all exquisite. Each of these channels the DIY feel of 1990s Tokyo street style but is crafted in fabrics and cuts that make them feel both extremely considered and — pardon the pun – really nice.
NICENESS’ clothes are often named after poets, painters or musicians — though, as Ito explains, “it’s not done in a strict or systematic way, but intuitively.” This season’s “B. Palmer” shirt, for example, takes its name from Buffalo Springfield’s bass player. Its graphics, on the other hand, are inspired by The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, a series of ukiyo-e woodcut prints by Utagawa Hiroshige. As with those applied to many other pieces, its finishing involved painstaking manual work – in this case repeated discharge printing and hand coloring – but, in Ito’s words, feels “relaxed, natural and alive” rather than precious.
Like all previous collections, each designed almost entirely from scratch, NICENESS Spring/Summer 2026 is hard to pin down. “That’s only natural,” says Ito. “Goh’s mind is pretty fascinating. His curiosity is incredibly broad, and he constantly comes up with new ideas.” Ito and Goh have been longtime friends, as is Kenji Ishiki, the art director who completes the core team. “When I first met him over twenty years ago,” Ito says of Goh, “he was already exploring everything from vintage clothing to major fashion houses, without drawing any clear distinctions between them. That attitude has never changed.” Ito, who handles the business side of NICENESS, turns his friend’s ideas into a brand and communicates them to the world, as Goh himself doesn’t give interviews. “The decision isn’t about creating mystery for its own sake; it’s just that he doesn’t want the brand to revolve around a single personality.”
Across its 80 stockists worldwide, NICENESS appears in different guises, with some stores highlighting its playful, experimental side, others its quieter, more understated one. Hampus von Hauswolff, head buyer at Stockholm boutique Nitty Gritty, went all-in on its formal offerings, picking up suits and shirting. “I had been following the brand for some time and admired it from afar,” he says. “After seeing it in person, I felt it’s personal and refreshing — so many brands look similar today.” His personal favorite is the “Romeo” dress shirt, cut from a deadstock Italian dobby-check fabric that features “one of this season’s best collars.” Nitty Gritty also stocks one of the few NICENESS staples: the “L. Lesh” tote bag that references mid-century American tool bags and is made from shuttle-loomed cotton canvas stonewashed for an aged effect.
NICENESS’ elusive-yet-approachable character is reflected in its motto: “Just good is good.” “Goodness,” Ito says, “is something very simple to feel, but very difficult to define. As a brand, to make something that’s just ‘good’ is actually the hardest thing to pull off. We often remind ourselves not to overcomplicate or over-explain things. When something is good, people will know it intuitively.”
It’s not that NICENESS doesn’t abundantly document its work, though. “For a brand of our size,” Ito continues, “we invest quite heavily in expressing ourselves through different mediums.” Beyond the often beautifully shot collection imagery, NICENESS’ website features a section called “Episode,” a miscellaneous category full of personal anecdotes and reflections from Goh that flesh out the brand’s worldview. In a recent entry, he links the inspiration behind the “Georgia” — a hybrid of a vintage U.S. military boat shoe and Georgia O’Keeffe’s worn-out oxfords rebuilt from hand-painted leather — to childhood memories of his father showing him skateboard tricks. The brand also produces hardcopy “Archive Books,” combining campaign photography with product imagery and accompanying texts.
With a total of ten employees, NICENESS is still a small operation. Yet in terms of the richness and scale of its creative output, it functions almost like a mini fashion house. When asked whether the brand — which opened its first flagship store in Ebisu, Tokyo in June last year — will remain independent, Ito replies that while they occasionally receive inquiries, it’s not the time for investors and corporate partnerships. “Right now, what matters most is that we protect the freedom of our creativity.”
