We just had dinner the other day, but welcome again!
This time, you’re here with your four-year-old daughter. She’s still very young, but does she have any sense of the kind of work you both do?

She already has some awareness of what we do. We used to bring her to the studio when we were preparing for shows or working on lookbooks. She loves being there, but for her, it still feels more like play.

She seems to be having such an exciting childhood. On the other hand, what were you two like as children?

I loved browsing through magazines and knew early on that I wanted to work in fashion. But my hometown, Zermatt, is a small town at the foot of the Matterhorn, so there wasn’t really anyone around who worked in fashion. Eventually, a customer at my parents’ restaurant mentioned she was in fashion school, and my mom encouraged by asking, “why don’t you go see it?” That led me to attend a school in Florence, which opened the door to where I am today.

I was born and raised in Vancouver, which, surprisingly, had a great skate scene even back in the early ’80s. I’ve been obsessed with skateboarding and snowboarding for as long as I can remember. Back then, skaters weren’t outsiders, they were actually considered pretty “cool.” After high school, I went to Georgetown University in the U.S., where I majored in finance and international business. Then I studied management at Oxford University. Looking back, I guess that’s a pretty elite educational background (laughs).

I didn’t know all that. You were interested in business.

I always thought my education would come in handy somehow. But after graduating college, I wanted to be where all the things I loved were happening, New York. I think it was in 1996. Back then, downtown New York was buzzing with creativity, and seeing everyone making something inspired me to join in. So, I enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and started creating graphic designs and T-shirts. During that time, I met James Jebbia, the founder of Supreme, and Chris Gibbs from UNION, and eventually began working at Supreme. While studying at FIT, I also went on a six-month exchange program to Florence, where I learned traditional sewing and tailoring. That’s where I met Lucie.

So that’s how you two met. Did you have a mentor or someone who influenced you? For example, when I was in junior high, I met Hiroshi (Fujiwara) and SK8THING, and their values and tastes strongly influenced my own. Of course, in the end, I had to find my own identity

In your case, TET, because you were in such big and dense city like Shibuya, you were surrounded by great people, but I didn’t find someone like that where I grew up. Maybe Vancouver was a bit too spread out? Perhaps the environment really makes a big difference.

Luke is my mentor now, but I didn’t have anyone like that growing up. Instead, nature was my biggest inspiration. Skiing down snowy mountains and hiking through forests really shaped my sensibilities. And the older I get, the more I realize how important that connection to nature is.

Maybe because Lucie grew up so freely in nature, she is very pure and intuitive, acting on her instincts. On the other hand, I am more of a thinker and constantly ask “why,” searching for references and logic. But when I was a kid, I chose everything based on whether it felt “cool” or “not cool.” What really matters most is having your own strong internal measure of things. After all, there is no absolute formula for cool. Even if you can’t immediately explain why, I think reacting instantly from the gut leads to true originality.

When I was younger, I worked at a pool hall and pizza shop because it was “cool.” By living according to instinct, I eventually found my way into the apparel world and unexpectedly, the self-expression turned into my work.

That’s the most natural and genuine path. Because it emerged spontaneously without being predetermined, it feels authentic and convincing. When you try to force a concept, it often ends up feeling overproduced or contrived.

That’s very true. Given how you’ve built your lives by trusting your own eyes, feet and hearts, how do you want to approach raising your daughter?

We want to respect her will, just like my parents did for me. They used to say, “You have to decide what you want to do and take full responsibility for your own life.” And they never hesitated to support me financially, so I had the freedom to choose my own path. We don’t want to impose our own egos on her either. What matters most is that she navigates life guided by her own curiosity and desire to explore.

Because of the nature of our work, we have the opportunity to travel to many different countries and introduce her to interesting people along the way which is a real privilege for her. She will grow up with a sense that the world is full of possibilities. Honestly, I think those experiences might be more valuable right now than what she could get from a traditional classroom.

Nowadays, school education is full of intense testing and competition, and kids are pressured to make major life decisions far too early. Compared to when we simply went with the flow, there’s so much more pressure now. And once you pick a path, there’s this social expectation that says, “You can’t change it,” or “You have to stick with it for life.”

Life is already challenging enough, do we really need to put that kind of pressure on kids from such a young age? It seems unrealistic to expect young people, who have so little knowledge and experience, to already know what they want to do or what they’re capable of. I believe the true purpose of school should be to learn how to live with others and build social skills. It should be a time to explore, observe, try things, fail sometimes, and gradually discover who you are. “Let kids be kids,” that’s how it should be.

That’s exactly how it is in Japanese schools, too. It’s surprising to realize that education systems around the world are trending in the same direction and you both feel the same way.

Now, with the rapid rise of AI and the accelerating pace of change in society, education has become an even more complex topic. It’s hard to know what will truly be useful in the future, so it’s more important than ever to stay flexible.

And yet, society often isn’t very accepting of change or stepping outside the norm. Many people fear being labeled as “failures” simply because they’ve chosen a new path. However, I believe that change is something to embrace. But I think change is cool, as parents, we want to show our daughter that “it’s perfectly okay to change your mind about what you want to do in life.” After all, I shifted from business to fashion, and I’m still growing. Even now, I’m exploring what might come next (laughs). You can be a chef, an architect, whatever inspires you. I want to show her that by living it myself.