Fashion can too often feel like a house of cards, an endless ascent in the pursuit of new gimmicks at the expense of quality whose foundations shake more with each added story. Nihombashi Mitsukoshi dedicates itself to progressive fashion that avoids this pitfall, priding itself on being a bastion of considered fashion that challenges the status quo from a position of assured strength. Accordingly we begin a series of interviews that encapsulate Nihombashi Mitsukoshi's stance on fashion with Makiko Minagawa, Creative Director and Textile Designer of ISSEY MIYAKE INC's HaaT, which appropriately is to be found in the heart of the Main Store.
Throughout Issey Miyake's own illustrious career with his eponymous label and related brands, Makiko Minagawa's name is a frequent occurrence, spending almost 3 decades as the iconic brand's Textile Director before founding HaaT, in 2000. 
However, her love affair with textiles had already begun long ago, "Ever since I was a child, I always enjoyed dyeing things. I would colour threads and make my own knits long before I entered Kyoto City University of Fine Arts where I studied textiles. I just kept walking this same path," says Minagawa, "I met Issey Miyake by chance shortly after his return from New York when he was looking to show his collections in Paris with Japan as his base, and for that some textile development was seriously needed, so I received the unexpected offer to work with him."
Throughout her career working with Miyake, Minagawa focused on the development of textiles in Japan, but the landscape we find now in present day Japan of revitalized regional production and pride in local industry was largely absent in the then technology and mass-production focused bubble-era Japan, so it was actually an encounter with India that was to be formative of her design philosophy.
"I have been to India many times. When Miyake was asked by the Indian Government to design his clothes using Indian textiles at an exhibition for the Year of India in France, I went there for textile research in 1983, and that was to be the first trip of many". In India I was finding wonderful hand-weaving techniques and textiles that were no longer widely used in Japan" recalls Minagawa, "but more than that there was a kind of pride in local production that was different from Japan at the time; the idea of making your life into something precious through clothing and textiles, these ideas that had been lost in Japan were still alive amongst the people of India. I wanted to reintroduce that back into Japan, therefore the Indian influence. At the time, I had been working with predominantly synthetic fabrics for so long, that when I encountered natural materials in India it really made me realize the beauty of nature and natural materials."
In HaaT, Makiko Minagawa pays homage to these principles with the name itself, meaning "village market" in Sanskrit, and seeking to rediscover the joy in craftsmanship she found there in Japan, 
"With HaaT I started to seek out and research domestic factories, and more importantly, people in Japan who still celebrated this creative philosophy and cherished natural materials. Through these collaborations, feedback and the ongoing back and forth with these people and manufacturers in Japan the possibilities for HaaT expanded, even when something is hard to implement, for example matching the nuances of Indian hand-sewing in Japan on machine, new possibilities emerge, and we are always experimenting in every step of the creative process".
The spoils of this passionate creative process was evident in the "Heart in HaaT" textile exhibition that recently toured Japan in 2014-2015 which served as a presentation of the huge variety of textiles made in Japan that now forms the body of HaaT's work,
whether offering a fresh take on Japan's own history with shibori, Japanese tie-dyeing, or offering HaaT's take on a European textile featuring luscious vintage embroidery, but made in Yamagata prefecture. "I wanted to show through the exhibition that we can still make all this in Japan and introduce the possibilities on our doorstep," says Minagawa, "I don't take inspiration specifically from Japanese aesthetics as such. I remember Issey Miyake always saying that if a Japanese person makes it, there is always an aspect that is already Japanese to it, so actively introducing and making it even more so is not necessary".
We hope you have enjoyed hearing the HaaT story so far, and you join us for the second part where we will discover what HaaT has in store for us this season and into the future.
*Please note that all items pictured are only available in limited quantities, and may be unavailable on your visit.
HaaT
Location
Nihombashi Mitsukoshi, Annex 4F