Renjiro Watanabe (渡辺 蓮次郎) – Our Lead Designer, Philosopher of Form
In a small studio tucked behind a quiet lane in Kyoto, surrounded by rolls of fabric and books on Zen architecture, Renjiro Watanabe works in near silence.
No digital sketchpads. No production rush. Just chalk, cloth, and a mind shaped by decades of fashion, rebellion, and reflection.
At 72, Renjiro leads HIMO’s limited-edition samue collections, bringing an edge of quiet defiance to a garment traditionally rooted in monastic calm. He doesn’t see this as contradiction. To him, form is only meaningful when it serves something deeper.
“Beauty without function is decoration,” he often says. “And we’re not in the business of decoration.”
A Journey from Noise to Stillness
Renjiro’s early career couldn’t have been more different from what he creates today.
As a young man, he studied fashion in Tokyo in the 1970s; A time when Japanese designers were beginning to redefine global fashion through deconstruction, contrast, and asymmetry. He was mentored briefly under a patternmaker for Yohji Yamamoto, and later took contract work in Paris and Milan, where his pieces were praised for their visual boldness.
But over time, he began to feel disillusioned.
“I was designing for applause, not for people,” he admits. “The clothes were loud. I was loud. But when the runway ended, everything still felt empty.”
It was during a trip to the Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture that everything changed. There, he saw a monk dressed in a deep indigo samue, worn, repaired, and perfectly draped. That moment, he says, showed him what he had forgotten: that clothes are not about statement, but about presence.
The Reimagined Samue
When Renjiro joined HIMO, he didn’t try to revolutionize the samue.
He refined it.
His approach combines old-world tailoring with contemporary subtlety, favoring quiet textures, raw-edge collars, hidden stitches, and breathable symmetry. In some pieces, he experiments with asymmetrical overlaps, mimicking natural drapes. Others are intentionally simplified to their purest form, almost architectural in their restraint.
His limited collections are cut in small batches. Many sell out in days.
Each one is marked by his signature: a single hand-tied stitch hidden along the inner lining, a nod to the quiet, personal discipline behind every piece.
Why We Call Him a Craftsman
Renjiro doesn’t think of himself as a designer.
He prefers the word shokunin; A Japanese term for someone who pursues their craft not for fame, but for the sake of excellence itself.
He doesn’t chase trends. He doesn’t use moodboards. His process is physical: touching, cutting, pausing, starting over. He often works alone, sometimes through the night, guided by intuition, memory, and purpose.
“The best compliment,” he once said, “is when someone wears my samue and forgets they’re wearing it.”
Legacy in the Making
At HIMO, we are proud to call Renjiro Watanabe our lead designer.
Not because of his past accolades, or his impeccable tailoring.
But because he reminds us of something easy to forget: that real elegance doesn’t demand attention, it invites stillness.
And in a world that moves too fast, that might be the most radical thing of all.
Explore the collection inspired by Renjiro’s work →
View the Samue Collection