Kamakura Classics
WHAT ARE KAMAKURA CLASSICS?
For the last thirty years, Kamakura Shirts has been focused on making the highest quality and longest lasting dress shirts. Their Kamakura Classics line pays tribute to the iconic shirt styles from the past that helped shape the company’s core sense of style. Founders Yoshio and Tamiko Sadasue got their start in the 1960s working under Kensuke Ishizu, the man responsible for bringing Ivy League style clothing to Japan, and American East Coast style helped guide the establishment of Kamakura Shirts in 1993.
The Ivy spirit of youthful insouciance found a welcome home in Kamakura, a beachside town that has enjoyed its own distinctive culture since the samurai era. The Shōnan coast was the birthplace for Japan’s own version of Ivy in the 1950s: the wealthy, unruly teenagers known as the Sun Tribe. In summoning the spirit of these legendary rebels and creative troublemakers, shirts in the Kamakura Classics line — whether button-downs in oxford and madras, pique polos, jersey pop-overs, or band-collar shirts with flap pockets — aren’t for the office but serve as essential wardrobe basics for the active lifestyles of the forever young at heart. And thanks to the relentless attention to detail, these faithful reproductions look as good today as they did back then. They’re “classics” for a reason.
Written by W. David Marx
W. David Marx is the Tokyo-based author of two books: a cultural history of Japanese menswear, Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style, and a general theory of cultural change, Status and Culture.
