Out of Nowhere, Japanese Denim Brand Kapital Hits the Runway
Kapital fans are having a wild 2025. When I broke the news in early January that the Japanese clothing brand, famed for its patchwork denim, had quietly taken investment from L Catterton, the LVMH-backed private equity company, in 2024, it exploded so far across the internet that it entered real life.
To be clear, LVMH does not own Kapital. LVMH is a majority investor in L Catterton, which is now itself a majority investor in Kapital. However, that didn't stop a whole host of outlets from repeating that line until it felt true.
And now, here we have Kapital quietly debuting on the runway during fashion month. Surely, this is LVMH's meddling, yes?
Actually, no. Not at all.
L Catterton's majority share in the Japanese label is likely meant to supercharge an expansion (possibly of the international variety) or to expand L Catterton's expanding interests in Japan. It will almost certainly change nothing about the way that Kapital works.
The investment was completed some time in 2024, remember — exact timing is unclear — so we'd presumably have seen some change in Kapital by now, were it to change at all.
In short, anyone sweating the corporate death of Kapital need not worry. The LVMH-fueled L Catterton investment will have little to no effect on its freewheeling output, save for inviting the possibility of a Kapital flagship store in the West.
But what about this Kapital runway show? That's pretty crazy, right?
Actually, it is. But it's also purely of Kapital's doing.
The Kapital runway show, which quietly premiered online in mid-January, is a formal departure from the label's exhaustively expansive lookbooks and campaigns. Seriously, dare to scroll to the bottom of the four separate lookbooks that Kapital prepared for its Spring/Summer 2025 collection — it'll take you some time.
But the world of Kapital is itself so far-reaching that a runway show was an inevitability recalling the (recently debunked) infinite monkey theorem. Except, instead of apes recreating Shakespeare, it's a Japanese clothing brand that can (and will) eventually do anything it desires.
Kapital's runway show did have fairly grounded purpose, though. In the accompanying nearly five-minute film, Kapital co-founder Kiro Hirata explains that the presentation was meant as a tribute to his father, the late Toshikiyo Hirata, who passed away in early 2024.
"My dad died," Hirata says in subtitled narration as footage shows an elderly Japanese man, a regular Kapital model, tossing aside a prop newspaper whose headline reads "THE DENIM DIED!" "I was searching [for a] way to express our thanks to him. The runway show is our ... farewell."
Appropriately, instead of being called "THE DENIM DIED," the show was more thoughtfully titled "GUIDING LIGHT."
In it, dozens of familiar Kapital faces strode a makeshift runway in the SS25 wares in front of a crowd seemingly comprising friends of the brand, with many wearing "THE DENIM DIED" caps. At the end, Hirata made a rare public appearance.
Certainly, on its face, the prospect of a Kapital runway show feels farfetched enough to seem like further proof of the LVMH acquisition.
But it's really only just another case of Kapital doing Kapital, same as it ever was forever.
Hirata's been masterminding tributes to his father, who founded Kapital as a relatively uncomplicated denim label in the '80s, for years. Consider Father's Day 2024, when Hirata gave away a pair of jeans that he personally assembled as a sort of passing of the denim torch.
Like so many of Hirata's arbitrary quirks — Kapital's collections have only grown larger and more disparate simply because he wills them to be — the Kapital runway show was likely also a one-off. Kapital naysayers, fear not.
