As a child I always enjoyed making small crocheted animal puppets. When I was around ten years old I started to make simple clothes, such as aprons and skirts, using a sewing machine. It wasn't until I was seventeen that I knitted a waistcoat for the first time in my life. My mother was an editor for Kodansya Co. Ltd., a publishing company that produced a series of 'how to do' books on practical subjects, so it is not surprising that instruction books on hand knitting were near to hand. I knitted the waistcoat following a pattern in one of these books. It seems strange now to think how important this event became in my life.

Around that time I picked up many ideas and scraps of information about shaping and tailoring from fashion magazines and adapted this information to make up dressmaking patterns which I made into my own coats and dresses.

When I was an art student I really wanted to dress in style, but everything that I liked in the shops was so expensive and I had so little money, so the practice of making my own cloths became a habit. I made pantaloons, knitted sweaters, bags, hats.... all sorts of clothes and accessories.

Once I started to sell my own-label knitted clothes to shops and boutiques, I realized that just relying on hand knitting would involve far too long in production time, so I bought a knitting machine, and mastered it, bit by bit, by reading the manual. I was never bothered if I didn't know a particular technique but there was something I wanted to make that needed it. One way or another, if it was something I myself wanted to wear, I was just going to have to learn that technique come hell or high water!

Now - although I may not always wear the clothes that I design - my approach is essentially the same. I still like to pick up new techniques and I still like to think first and foremost about what something feels like to wear.