Right: Engineered Garments suit, Left: Engineered Garments Dolphin Parka + Cargo Pants

Choosing what clothes to wear can be a daunting task. The internet is home to many how-to sites, clothing enthusiast forums, and digitized fashion runways pointing towards the endless cyclicality of the garments put out into the market. It’s no wonder that most people default to classic looks that make them look put-together in the eyes of strangers on the street. I once was enamored about one day being that guy with the clean sneakers, crisp raw denim, and freshly pressed button down...but like many clothing enthusiasts that came before me, looking good simply wasn’t enough.

One of my favorite brands that I continue to come back to is Engineered Garments.



Keizo Shimizu founded the Nepenthes umbrella label in 1998 as a purveyor of quality American clothing imported from the USA. Think New Balance sneakers, Ralph Lauren, and Foot Locker exclusives only sold in their LA stores. This eastern-bound funnel of American-made clothes had been going on for a while, as detailed in David Marx’s Ametora, and Shimizu was one of many budding independent Japanese fashion retailers who found inspiration in the clothes produced stateside.



Daiki Suzuki, who later founded Engineered Garments, came on board to assist with the buying strategy for the upstart label. While Shimizu’s many journeys out West proved to be bountiful; his vision for Nepenthes was not going to end with simply curating clothes. The closure of many American garment factories in the 90s acted as a perfect storm for the Japanese label to create their own clothes and fill a much-needed hole in the market. Engineered Garments rose to notoriety following its inception and continues to receive an abundance of press because of its focus on American-made clothes in New York’s aging Garment District.