An Interview with Cale’s Yuki Sato

The founder and designer on shifts in Japanese menswear, the significance of small changes, and the tension between art and fashion.

This past summer, as I was flipping through the glorious racks at Ven, my hands paused on something that connected with a buried, primal part of my brain. Pants. A cotton/silk blend that was so soft they were nearly liquid but still had some grippiness. Brown, but also kinda purple? They morphed in the light. The cut threatened to null and void all other patterns. At that point, the price didn’t matter. I now had my first jawn from Cale, a Japanese brand I had never heard of before.

Whether it’s a wearied seen-it-all jadedness that comes with age or just that there’s a lot of dogshit out there, it’s increasingly rare these days I feel impacted at all when trying on a new jawn. From time to time, I still get that reverent rush; most recently a long-sleeve tee I copped from mfpen’s spring/summer 2025 collection elicited from me an involuntary and breathy “fuuuuuck” as cloth hit skin.

Cale is making damn sure I’m gonna be whispering a lot more profanity as the label hits its stride. It’s already in the golden trifecta of US doors—Ven, Mohawk General Store, and C’H’C’M’—and every new tidbit I picked up on the label only deepened the lore. Like, what do you mean designer Yuki Sato runs a respected art gallery? And he, like AURALEE’s Ryota Iwai, also gets in the textile trenches and creates some of the brand’s fabrics from scratch? I, and you, had to know more, so I hit up Sato-san to ask about the relationship between his gallery and the brand, how subtle changes can have seismic results, and the philosophies he lives with everyday.