Design consulting / Fashion culture / Research
A TOKYO-BASED STUDIO WORKING BETWEEN BRANDS, IDEAS, AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS.
KLEINSTEIN supports fashion and culture projects through design direction, research, writing, and critical consulting, approaching fashion as Yosou (様装): appearance, dress, behavior, and social form.
Selected Projects
PROJECTS OR (THE QUIET ART OF MAKING THINGS WORK).
Activities
PUBLIC-FACING MOVEMENTS: TALKS, PRESS, RELEASES, POP-UPS, INTERVIEWS.
ESSAY
GQ Japan April Issue | Virgil Abloh, Tourist in the Fashion World
APPEARANCEDANCHI RADIO – Thinking Through the Current State of the Luxury Industry in 2026
APPEARANCEDANCHI RADIO – Gosha Rubchinskiy and the Current State of Japanese Domestic Brands
INTERVIEWTOKYO ART BEAT – Is Fashion Important for Artists in the Age of Social Media?
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Texts
ESSAYS, CRITICISM, INTERVIEWS, AND COMMISSIONED WRITING.
Essay series
Fashion, Discretized Human and Its Modality
A critical sequence on fashion systems, technology, bodies, religion, viruses, and the possibility of new forms of humanity.
Is fashion art? Interview with Valerie Steele by Yusuke Koishi
The Birth of Contemporary Fashion: How Comme des Garçons Made the Non-Trivial Ordinary — A Review of The Met’s Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between
Pharrell Williams: Can the Strongest Consumers Become the Strongest Creators in the Age of A.I.?
Fashion and pandemics
Interview with Dragan Espenschied of Rhizome on Internet Art Preservation (Part 1)
Post-Trump society and diversity in fashion
The innovative spirit of Issey Miyake