“Monozukuri” (craftsmanship) over stores and shows

——Some wish to see mame establish retail stores or organise shows. What do you think the form that the brand will take is going to be?

For the moment, we do not wish to establish stores or organise shows. Rather, there are many things that we wish to dabble in with regard to the intensity of our monozukuri. We wish to invest in how we can create products of higher quality, and products that are more uniquely mame.

Monozukuri is not a process that improves the very next day after you attempt to make an improvement. When something goes wrong, improvements may not be immediately possible once you take steps to make improvement. Large numbers of people are involved, and the products that we are trying to create are extremely difficult to make and take time to produce. We aim to establish a win-win relationship for both the production plants and ourselves, based on a firm understanding of these points.

From the autumn/winter 2015-16 collection

Sustaining a brand is very difficult. In order for us to hit our 10th anniversary in five years, I aim to develop the brand by taking the time to reach various milestones slowly. Instead of celebrating our sales performance, it is all the more important to remain humble now, and to give our full attention to steady monozukuri.

I feel that many people are starting to recognise the brand, so we have to make sure that we do not disappoint. In a good sense, we are now in crunch time. We have to work hard.

Maiko Kurogouchi　Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1985. She established the Kurogouchi Design Office in 2010, and founded the mame brand. In 2014, Kurogouchi received the Newcomer Award and Shiseido Encouragement Award in the Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix.