One
I’ve been under the weather this past week, so I’ve naturally gone and researched one-person operations. One person sits in a room, makes stuff, sells it online. We’ve discussed this before in the context of Evan Kinori & Never Cursed. There is also Cottle, which has been profiled a lot lately; and of—nothing, which weirdly hasn’t. Outside of clothes, there is DMade for dopp kits, Magnus for fidget toys. Ceramicists are a big one, with mercifully a lot more gender parity. And of course, everybody has their own side hustles now, so this is how things start.
The one-person operation does not really scale, of course. Burnout is a risk, as is boredom. People eventually get assistants, delegate the thing out. Evan Kinori is transparent about this, with many of their pieces being made elsewhere now. (The tell for studio-made stuff is “California”, I think.)
Obviously this all resonates because, well, do you know anything about me. Working alone for 13 years will do this to you. You come to see yourself in the people who scale slowly while working in a space of intention & care. Ethically, I still believe very fiercely in the craft of my work, and I believe that a pendulum swings between “craft” and, uh, whatever mess we’ve got right now. It’s important to remember where we came from and what we can do about it.
I also, like most of you, buy lots of stuff online, and so I have a lovely connection with Evie, my letter carrier, and nobody who has actually made or shipped the stuff I buy. When I get a handwritten letter from the person who literally made my clothes, that’s not nothing, right? But I’ve also bought a few pieces from Kinori, and he’s included a postcard with each of them. The handwriting is different each time. I notice that, too.
But there is still the felt sense of the thing. You can root your brand in the intimate, the artisanal, growing slowly enough to create that intimacy as a vibe. By the time you’re big enough for that original definition to lose all meaning, few notice. Less might care. I was in Ginza a couple of months ago, extremely ramen-sloshed, wandering around Dover Street Market like it was a fun, dumb museum for bleeding-edge it kids. I turned a corner, then another, then saw something that looked vaguely familiar, walked up, peeled back the collar, and for the first time, in person, in a real store, halfway around the world, I saw Evan Kinori’s name.