Consistency is important. Chopping and changing things when they don’t immediately work how you originally intended will continually lead to further disappointment. This stands for workout regimes, diets, hobbies, relationships, careers, supporting a bad football club – just about everything in life benefits from consistency, discipline, and a healthy amount of belief
Consistency can also pay dividends when building a brand. Too much change or regularly flexing to accommodate to trends, and you’re bound to switch core customers off. We’d bet that all of your favourite brands – the ones you reach for again and again – probably don’t look all that different to how they did five, ten or 15 years ago.
One of our favourite brands that has trusted their process wholeheartedly is Nanamica. With a brand name roughly translating to ‘house of the seven seas’, Nanamica have let trends wash over them as if it were the tide rolling over their toes. They’ve been felt, but this hasn’t done anything to change their identity.
But perhaps ironically, for such a consistent brand, Nanamica’s route to existence, was anything but consistent…
Eiichiro Homma, Nanamica’s founder, has had only one constant in his life – a deep an unwavering love for the sea. Being born on Japan’s Northern coastline, he spent his youth staring at the water. When he was a surf bum student in Tokyo, he passed time between classes dancing on top of it. And now, he has a brand that references the sea in every collection. Homma was, and always will be, infatuated by the coast.
After graduating from university in 1982, Homma would first enter the world of design through Goldwin, a Japanese sportswear company that had evolved into a distributor for brands such as The North Face & Helly Hansen. At Goldwin, Homma quickly developed a broad understanding of how a brand functions. He worked across marketing, product planning, branding, promotion, and merchandising – but eventually his maritime instincts would kick in, as he became brand manager for Helly Hansen, a Norwegian marine wear label that Goldwin distributed domestically.
The years spent at Goldwin & Helly Hansen gave Homma a foundation that was both creative and technical. He learned that every design choice in performance wear has a genuine reason behind it: taped seams, fabric choices, gussets, closures, pockets – all purposeful, all designed for real-life use.
But by the early 2000s, this colossal emphasis on performance began to bother him. The outdoor industry was obsessed with technical prowess. But Homma wasn’t. He wasn’t a mountaineer or an elite-level climber, but still desired the functionality of technical garments, only packaged in a more wearable format. He looked toward certain fashion brands and saw them mixing sportswear fabrics with design features such as military collars and work pockets. But here, the functionality was entirely lost; the features weren’t being used for performance, they were being used performatively.
Homma saw an opportunity presented plainly in front of him. Why couldn’t performance clothing retain its functionality yet feel more wearable and timeless? Why couldn’t a GORE-TEX jacket pair with loafers and wool trousers? His train of thought would come to shape not one, but two of the most quietly influential Japanese labels of the century.
Around 2001, while still at Goldwin, Homma wanted to put his mad idea into practice, ideally by using The North Face’s existing DNA. After tentatively floating the proposal to the head of branding at The North Face, his idea got the green light. The subdivision was to be a Japan-exclusive line that took classic outdoor silhouettes and reworked them with more balanced fits, richer textures, and less abrasive colour palettes.
Homma wanted to reimagine The North Face garments from the ’70s & ’80s, and while perusing the archive, he came across a purple tag, used for a women’s project in the 1980s. He liked the contrast the colour had against the garments and decided that it would be stitched into the neck of every product. People then naturally started referring to the line by the colour of the labels. The North Face ‘Purple Label’, was born.
Almost immediately, Purple Label was picked up. A discerning Japanese audience were totally taken with the way in which Homma had reengineered the heritage silhouettes, bringing them into the present for everyday use in a city like Tokyo. Garment dyed climbing trousers with a relaxed fit. 60/40 parka jackets in olive hues. Boxy organic cotton graphic tees. Wearable function might seem commonplace in today’s clothing landscape, but back in 2003, it wasn’t.
At the same time as Purple Label, Homma also decided to start a project of his own. Together with his colleague Takashi Imaki, he founded Nanamica (which would fulfil the design of Purple Label as well as produce its own garments). Just like Homma, Imaki was a long-time lover of the sea, so it felt fitting to choose a name that reflected this common ground.
Their philosophy was simple: to make timeless products that could be worn by anybody. Nanamica would be the meeting point between utility and tradition. Its aesthetic drew heavily from American Ivy classics, such as naval coats, varsity jackets, chinos, and Oxford shirts – but each piece was re-engineered with genuinely functional details. The result was clothing that felt timeless: everyday staples elevated by utility.
Another cornerstone of Nanamica’s ideology was the concept of transcending categories – age, gender, and geography. Homma has since said that he wouldn’t find it strange to see “a man and a woman, or a high school student and a sixty-year-old, to wear the same brand.” The clothing was designed to appeal to everyone who values quality, function, and honesty in design.
Over the course of the next 20 years, there really isn’t all that much to say about Nanamica, and that’s because everything has been so incredibly consistent. Homma & Imaki had a clear vision in 2003, and their brand has fulfilled it in every single way. Nanamica has never chased trends or seasonal hype; in fact, the brand is known for retiring popular items if they begin to feel out of sync with the times, only to reintroduce them later when it feels right again. This level of restraint is totally refreshing in an industry that is plagued by others doing the opposite.
Self-control & consistency are precisely why Nanamica is still around. While more than a handful of major brands continually reinvent themselves, Nanamica refines the same concepts year after year, but somehow the collections never become stale. The brand’s garments have to move with the rhythm of real life, or they get left behind.
Over two decades on, Nanamica has grown from a small Tokyo label into one of Japan’s most respected names in contemporary menswear. It’s work for The North Face Purple Label, its timeless naval-inspired silhouettes, and its commitment to balance have all contributed to its widespread success.
As reliable as the tide, Nanamica continues to make gear that’s easy to wear, built to last, and finished with their trademark functionality. The new Autumn/Winter 2025 line-up carries on the tradition, and we’ve rounded up a few of our favourites from SEVEN STORE here:
