Needle and Tread: Yuki Matsuda’s handcrafted footwear
Yuketen designer and founder, Yuki Matsuda, in his Hermosa Beach studio and showroom. Photo .
Yuki Matsuda reclines in his Southern California studio, his creased leather boots planted squarely on the ground. Dusty shoes are scattered on nearby tables, thrift store treasures whose origins have been polished smooth and indistinguishable from years of wear. Hand-sketched designs blanket the wall behind him. Lining the atelier is a confectionary array of boots and moccasins.
For over 20 years, the Japanese-born designer has operated his Yuketen footwear and accessory label from Hermosa Beach. An archivist of Americana, his designs borrow from New England sporting tradition and North America’s native heritage, as well as the military annals of the Occident. His more eccentric collections have featured hair-on-hide leopard and zebra skins, Rockabilly-style metal studs, and mismatched, multi-colored suedes. Matsuda’s marriage of historicity and irreverence has made the designer a celebrity among devotees of folk fashion, yet he remains largely unknown locally.
Big in Japan
Growing up in 1970s Osaka, Japan, the 44-year-old Matsuda was inculcated with a love for the United States.
“America was kind of a dream country,” he said.
Young Osakans cherished vintage Americana like a tender memory. From excavated remnants of popular American culture they sought to reconstruct the archetypal ethos of cool.
Their local dispensary was Osaka’s Amerikamura (“American Village”), where clothiers traded in vintage Brooks Brothers suits, L. L. Bean duck boots and Pendleton shirts. It was under the tutelage of these proprietors of hip that Matsuda developed a keen eye for detail.
“When I was teenager and I wanted to buy a Pendleton shirt at the store, it cost me 150 bucks brand new,” Matsuda said. “But if I bought used Pendleton shirts at the vintage clothing stores, it was only 35 dollars. So, I started going into vintage stores and studying more, and each time I went I would see that these Pendleton shirts had different labels depending on their age.”
Older Pendleton garments were identified by a satin label, as opposed to the modern cream-colored tag. Details such as this were valued by the designer and his peers because of the high quality of classic American textile and design. He says their dedication to minutia bordered on cult-like.
“People were so freak about all the details, I grew up around kinda freak people. But that was normal for me. That was my normal life,” he said.
Matsuda still speaks with reverence when describing the Big Mac brand chambray work shirts worn by he and his young friends.
“It was awesome,” he said. “You must have a Big Mac chambray shirt at the time. It was made in the USA, had triple-needle stitching and felled seams all over.”
The designer says Levi’s redline selvage 501s were held in similarly sanctimonious regard.
Historically, Levi’s cut and sewed its jeans in America from rolls of denim that were woven on American shuttle looms. The continuous horizontal weave of the denim thread on these looms formed sealed white edges on either side of the roll, which were marked by a signature red line. Called the “self-edge” or “selvage”, this special finish kept the denim weave from unraveling.
By the 1950s, however, denim mills had begun replacing their shuttle looms with more efficient projectile looms, increasing output but yielding inferior denim with a hasty finish.
For Matsuda, the red line that peeked outward from the up-turned cuff of his 501s was a testament to classic American denim construction.
“They don’t make it that way anymore. People make money, but I think American workwear is trashier now. You wear it three months and then throw it away and buy new clothes,” he said.
Hands-on
Matsuda came to California in 1985, at the age of 18. As buyer for a handful of Los Angeles trading companies, he scoured flea markets, thrift stores and private reserves throughout the United States, seeking all manner of American-made goods to satiate the Japanese appetite.
In 1989 he struck out on his own and founded Meg Co. with his future wife, Megumi. The company is her namesake.
“When I left my last job as a buyer, she bought a fax machine for me and loaned me like three thousand dollars to start my business,” Matsuda said. “That’s how Meg Co. started.”
With no employees, a single client and an occasional booth at the Rose Bowl flea market, the designer’s Torrance apartment served as company headquarters.
“Back then it was scary,” he said. “You didn’t know if you were going to make money or not. Paycheck to paycheck?” He laughs at the suggestion. “Day by day.”
In 1990 Matsuda met Tom O’Neil, operator of a small East Coast shoe factory, who invited the young Osakan to come learn cordwainery first hand.
“At the time, I didn’t know too much about shoes. I only knew I needed to know something different,” Matsuda said. “[O’Neil] said, ‘Come on over to my factory.’ He told me I’d never go see him. ‘It’s too far away,’ he said. I think I’m the first guy to actually show up.”
Working together the two created a basic Goodyear-welt shoe, produced exclusively for Japanese select shop, Beams [“Goodyear” denotes the method of attaching the sole]. Their Oyster footwear line proved a success and launched the designer’s enduring friendship with O’Neil and his successor, Charles Covatch.
Yuki Matsuda's take on the classic American Hunting Boot. Photo by James Whitely.
Matsuda’s frequent travels through New England at this time exposed him to the region’s indigenous tradition of moccasin sewing. One of his first Yuketen models was born from the Maine moccasin style made popular by brands like Gokey and L.L. Bean.
“I had an idea of using the crepe sole and putting it on the old American hunting boot,” he said. “The crepe sole came from the Canadian Inuit, or maybe the Alaskan Inuit. They added a seal skin bottom to their boots for walking on the ice so they didn’t slip while hunting the seals. I studied more and saw that [later hunters] who didn’t have access to seal skin used the crepe sole. So I realized that crepe soles are really good for the ice. But for walking in town they’re not that comfortable, so I added two softer pads for comfort as well as longer wear.”
Although he resides in Southern California, Matsuda never left New England. The Maine moccasin remains the foundation for many of his models and the lion’s share of Yuketen shoes are handmade in Maine factories, under the direction of his manufacturing partner, Jerry Whitney.
“We still have great, skilled people out there,” Matsuda said.
The designer speaks of hand sewing as a dying craft. He attributes its extinction, in part, to the singularity of the New England work ethic.
“I guess if Thailand made shoes better than our factory in Maine, then it would be okay to move production there,” he said.
Ryan Keenan in New England for Yuketen's Fall/Winter '11 lookbook. Provided by Meg Co.
A Yuketen shoe retails for between $250 and $600, a price point many scoff at.
“My shoes are not cheap,” Matsuda said. “But when people buy a pair, they know they’ll have them five, six years, no problem.”
Ryan Keenan has worked with the designer since 1996 and served as Meg Co.’s chief operating officer, sales representative, model and all-around company Renaissance man. He says Yuketen’s cost derives from the level of investment Matsuda puts into his work.
“I don’t know any other company out there that can do the product that we’re doing for the price we actually offer it for,” Keenan said.
He describes the typical Yuketen supplier as the “generational-type, operating out of a single, standalone building that has existed for decades, if not centuries.”
Horween, one of the company’s main supply-partners, is a three-generation-old Chicago tannery widely recognized for its artisanal and quality leathers. Using ingredients like chromium, oak bark and maple crystals to treat their hides, Horween leather is imbued with an intoxicating aroma Keenan says is noticeably distinct from the chemical treatments of many tanneries. The exact recipe for this special concoction, called “the liquor”, is kept like an alchemist’s secret.
Yuketen’s own production is, like Horween, small in scale. Every shoe is made to order based on stockists specifications, and orders number in the tens, not the thousands.
“Each product is actually created one by one, not on a factory chain,” Keenan said. “You don’t have Joe making the left side and Ralph making the right side, and then you try to match them together at the end and you’ve got some mismatches going on. It’s not going to happen with Yuketen because you’ve got one guy who is working on the hand sewing and one lady, for example, working on the stitching. It’s a more uniform product.”
Recent Yuketen collections have included a wider swath of styles, with materials and manufacturing matched to the geographic locales from which Matsuda derives inspiration: Canadian military boots crafted in Canada; huaraches constructed in Mexico from old tires, nails, and leather; and dress models made in France and Italy.
Matsuda’s two-year-old Yuketen Maine Guide Boots. Photo .
Matsuda’s work demonstrates the attention to detail instilled in him through his Osakan upbringing. The curving strap of his Maine Guide Boots is a simple aesthetic touch that flies in the face of austerity. It’s a detail the designer likens to the curves of an Alfa Romero 2000 GT Veloce, explaining how the classic Italian sports car altered the standard of square chassis design in the 1970s.
“To other people shoe details are boring or inconsequential, but to me shoe details are revelational,” he said in a 2010 interview with online fashion magazine Hypebeast.
Ultimately, Matsuda concedes, Yuketen is a product for fellow “freaks”: those who share his appreciation of quality and penchant for detail.
“We want to make other people happy,” he said. “That, I think, is definitely our philosophy. By ‘other people’, however, I mean not the entire world, but instead maybe one in a hundred thousand.”
Rebirth
Today, Meg Co.’s headquarters and storefront are housed in a former automotive repair shop on Hermosa Avenue. A store wall bearing an innocuous display of Birkenstocks hides a secret passageway to the studio and showroom where the designer gives his creations first light. Yuketen and the Monitaly clothing line Matsuda founded in 1995 have recently brought him recognition from industry leaders and basement bloggers alike, helped in no small part by fashion’s resurgent interest in Americana. Both labels are carried with regularity by Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Opening Ceremony, and in vaunted boutiques internationally.
In a fitting display of irony, the arrival of American fashion’s full circle has found iconic brands like L. L. Bean taking a page from Yuketen’s lookbook.
“I was so happy to see them borrowing from my designs, because I was using L.L. Bean’s catalogs and ideas in designing my early models,” Matsuda said.
Keenan says that while Meg Co.’s diversity of clothing lines (it is presently associated with seven brands outside of Yuketen and Monitaly) has allowed it to successfully weather the cyclical capriciousness of the industry, the present climate has allowed Matsuda to shine.
“Yuketen, Monitaly: these Americana, or heritage-traditional, lines are what Yuki’s truly inspired by,” he said. “They have always been in the background, not really making money for the company. He’s done it as a labor of love, just to keep those ideas rolling, because he has known in his heart that someday it would be an important part of fashion again.”
Matsuda with assistant Ryan Keenan in his Hermosa Beach studio and showroom. Photo by James Whitely.
Matsuda has remained humble in the spotlight. More likely to wear corduroys and a T-shirt than a suit and tie – unless attending a Florence tradeshow – the designer attributes his company’s growth to the “beautifully hard” work of his team, specifically Keenan.
“I don’t know anyone like him,” said Matsuda. “To be able to make other people happy the way he does. He always thinks of other people. It’s amazing to watch how he takes care of the customer, how much people love to talk to him. So many people want to talk to Ryan, almost like he’s healing them. It’s pretty great to see.”
Twenty-two years from humble, apartment-bound beginnings, the designer says he’s just getting started.
“Let’s say that you have a first life from zero to 20 years old, and that the next life would be from 20 to 40 years old. Meg Co. has that kind of cycle too,” he said. “This is our second life.”