Shinpei Goto has spent the last season time traveling.
On the back of a triumphant two seasons showing on the Paris runways (thanks to financial support he received from winning 2024’s Fashion Prize of Tokyo), this season the Masu designer took stock of all he’s achieved so far. Working in collaboration with Yuma Kishi, an artist who approaches AI as “a form of alien intelligence,” Goto took his oeuvre from 2018 to the present and fed it into an AI program to create a Masu mashup of sorts. The idea was to better understand Masu’s identity and to gain a kind of hindsight so that the designer could improve upon what had come before. “I updated the things I thought I could have done better,” the 32-year-old said.
Let’s take a look at what that actually meant in practice. First up, a vampirish overcoat that served as the base item for MASU’s first runway show in 2021. Goto had realized, after spending a long time wearing it himself, that it was far too heavy, and so this time made it with lighter wool. He also added his own buttons (something he didn’t have time for previously). Most notable for Goto was the brand’s popular, peak-lapeled tailored jacket—seen in the last look—in which he swapped the silk lining for a more durable cupra. He spoke about this jacket like it was an old acquaintance he had unfinished business with: “A lot of people became aware of Masu through that jacket, and so I was determined to face it again.”
Other re-ups included popcorn tops—a Masu staple—that appeared as bomber jackets with a Pegasus silhouette emblazoned on the chest, or as cardigans with Breton stripes. Standouts included the crushed velvet bombers, Ivy-style argyle sweaters (with faded argyle shadows also printed onto denim) and needle-punched flannel shirts and pleated skirts that recalled the fuzziness of a Chanel tweed. A break in the nostalgia came in the form of a collaboration—the brand’s first ever—with Puma, which yielded a set of matching sweatpants and zip-up jacket.
Beyond the objectively good product, Masu’s appeal lies in its characterization and storytelling. This season the brand’s name was rendered in the likeness of NASA’s red ‘Worm’ logo (which the agency used from 1975-1992), printed on tote bags and on the feathered helmets, made with milliner Nozomi Kurokawa—another reference to a spaceman (or perhaps an angel) who had come traveling on his ship from afar. Like cracked geodes, chinks in the beaten-up helmets revealed sparkling gemstones within—Masu’s intergalactic prophet had clearly braved a tough journey.
In some ways, Goto is lightyears ahead of his menswear contemporaries in that he is consistently able to combine a brashly masculine confidence with a delicate sensitivity that in both silhouette and texture always feels up-to-the-minute. He titled the collection 20XX, simultaneously rooting it to the current century while diffusing it through time, all the while rebelling against the convention that designers must create a selection of entirely brand new clothes season after season. Standing in his showroom, Goto summed it up more poetically: “I think it’s important to cherish your own world.”
