The newest piece from KUON, the Tokyo label that rebuilds old Japanese cloth into everyday clothes, is a sweatshirt, and that is exactly why it is worth a look. The Bleached Boro Sweatshirt went up on KUON's official store on October 12, Tokyo time, as part of its Fall/Winter 2026 (FW26) collection. It takes boro, the Japanese tradition of patching and mending worn textiles until they become something new, and puts it on the most ordinary garment in your closet.
What the sweatshirt actually is
The patchwork on the chest is built from what KUON calls Upcycle Boro Type 2, the brand's modern take on traditional boro, combined with leftover fabric generated while making the rest of the collection. Nothing here is a printed imitation of patching; it is real cloth layered on cotton. The whole sweatshirt then goes through an ozone process that fades it to a soft, vintage-like finish, so the patches and the body look like they have aged together.
The fit is deliberate. KUON gives it a generous shoulder and a roomy body but cuts the length shorter and the sleeves slimmer, which keeps it boxy without turning sloppy. The brand's own reasoning is practical: it can be worn alone in early autumn, and the narrow sleeves slide under a coat in winter without bunching. It comes in two colors, Smoky Lilac and Charcoal, in sizes M, L and XL. The body is 100% cotton, the trim is a cotton, polyester and nylon blend, and it is made in Japan. KUON's store lists it at ¥39,600, with the final price adjusting at checkout depending on where it ships. When we checked on Monday morning, a couple of size and color combinations were already sold out.
The rest of KUON's FW26 roll-out
The sweatshirt is the easy entry point to a season that gets very serious very quickly. A few days earlier KUON released a Sashiko MA-1 flight jacket covered in yose-moyo sashiko (sashiko is a Japanese running-stitch technique once used to reinforce work clothes) in the Hymon, or ice-crack, pattern. KUON explains that the motif, also called Koriwari, traces the lines of breaking ice and stands for the arrival of spring. That jacket is listed at ¥825,000. The one-of-a-kind Sashiko Crest Snow Parka, patched with archive fabrics on the front, sits at ¥990,000.
In between are pieces that show how KUON thinks about craft. The Dorozome MA-1 is a nylon flight jacket mud-dyed using the dorozome technique of Amami Oshima, an island in southern Japan. In its FW26 notes, KUON says the dyeing was done at Kanai Kogei, where tannins extracted from sharinbai react with iron in the mud to create the color. The same notes introduce the Sashiko Mended Denim, now in black as well as indigo, hand-stitched by SASHIKO GALS, the group of artisans in Otsuchi, Iwate, that KUON has worked alongside for 15 years since the 2011 earthquake.
Why it matters
Designer Shinichiro Ishibashi, who trained under a Tokyo tailor and worked as a pattern maker before becoming KUON's designer in 2016, has built the label around one line from its brand page: new things become old, but beautiful things remain beautiful. The Bleached Boro Sweatshirt is that idea at its most wearable. If you have been watching boro and sashiko from a distance, start here, then work your way into the denim.
For more on this corner of Japanese craft, read our look at Kapital's Boro Labo sashiko jacket, the Momotaro Jeans explainer and our raw denim beginner's guide.
Shop the Bleached Boro Sweatshirt · KUON FW26 · Powered by SASHIKO GALS
