It&rsquo;s Poggy&rsquo;s world, and we&rsquo;re just living in it.

Motofumi &ldquo;Poggy&rdquo; Kogi builds arguments with clothes. In Poggy Style: Dressing for Work and Play, published by Rizzoli, the Japanese tastemaker makes a persuasive case for breaking menswear&rsquo;s invisible rules. The thesis? Tailoring and streetwear aren&rsquo;t enemies; they&rsquo;re dance partners.
For more than two decades, Poggy has carved out a lane that blends Tokyo cool with Savile Row precision. Think tweed jackets with hoodies. Crisp suits with sneakers. A wide-brim hat where a tie might traditionally sit. It might sound like chaos, but on him, it looks inevitable.
At the core of his philosophy is the Japanese idea of hare and ke. Ke is the everyday grind while hare is the special occasion, the spark. Poggy believes modern life is overloaded with ke. Too much routine, not enough celebration. The way we dress, he argues, should rebalance that equation. Even if it&rsquo;s just layering your most comfortable sweatshirt under your sharpest jacket.
We caught up with Poggy to talk about the book, the speed of fashion and why a suit might just be the ultimate blank canvas.

When did the idea for the book first come to you?
It started casually, like most good things do. Two years ago at Paris Fashion Week, I was seated at a runway show next to an editor from Rizzoli whom I&rsquo;ve known from before. Mid-conversation, the editor threw out a simple question: &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you publish a book with us?&rdquo; I thought it was just a casual conversation between us. Then, I returned to Japan and an email landed in my inbox. Suddenly, it wasn&rsquo;t just talk. The project had officially begun. So, I teamed up with a Japanese publishing house and over two years, the idea evolved into the finished book.
In the world we&rsquo;re living in today, what role does fashion play?
I see fashion as the fastest-moving design industry in the world. If you see like say, cars; a new model can take up to 10 years. Watches? Five years, easily. Fashion? Six months. Sometimes less. Trends can flip in a single season. That speed is both exciting and exhausting. It&rsquo;s capitalism at full throttle. People are tired of chasing what&rsquo;s new every other week. However, I think fashion still matters, especially now. When I was in Paris for the Auralee show, I was struck by how seamlessly it wove Japanese culture into modern collections. Nothing loud, nothing forced. Just quiet confidence; simple, timeless, thoughtful. In an era where technology is racing to replicate human creativity, I believe fashion remains deeply human. It&rsquo;s instinct. Emotion. Individuality. That&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s more important than ever now.

Minimalism [excites me the most about fashion right now].

Many see you as a bridge between Japanese streetwear and global luxury. How did you balance those worlds in life and in your book?
To understand that, I have to rewind to the early 2000s. Back in 2003, when I was working at United Arrows, the industry was under the spell of Hedi Slimane. Skinny jeans. Rock-and-roll tailoring. Razor-sharp silhouettes. At the same time, street culture was exploding. I crossed paths with global style heavyweights like Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. What stood out wasn&rsquo;t just their streetwear roots, it was how they mixed them with tailoring. A structured jacket over baggy denim. A tie with sneakers. A long coat over chunky soles. That hybrid energy wasn&rsquo;t common in Japan yet. I saw the gap and the opportunity. I then proposed opening a store that would merge luxury and streetwear under one roof. It sounded ambitious, maybe impossible even. But in 2006, we did it. A multi-brand space that placed Fendi and Brunello Cucinelli alongside Nike and Supreme. But the challenge wasn&rsquo;t just aesthetic, it was cultural. Each brand had its own retail identity. My&nbsp; job was to create harmony, so customers couldn&rsquo;t easily tell where luxury ended and street began. That philosophy runs straight through the book.

Even within something traditional, there&rsquo;s always room to play.

What excites you most about fashion right now?
Honestly? Minimalism. I love seeing how it&rsquo;s taken over not just in Asia, but in the West and pretty much everywhere else. Asia, especially Japan, has always had this reputation for simplicity. Clean lines. Understated colours. Thoughtful details. But now, that mindset has gone global and every country is putting its own spin on it. What&rsquo;s interesting is that minimal doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mean boring. Even when the clothes look simple, the creativity behind them is endless. Designers keep reworking the basics by adjusting proportions, refining fabrics, tweaking silhouettes and somehow making them feel new again. It&rsquo;s quiet innovation.
You wear a lot of suits, sometimes just the jacket. Would you call them your fashion armour?
I wouldn&rsquo;t say armour. It&rsquo;s more like&hellip; a tool. Or maybe a playground. Jackets have endless possibilities. They can completely transform your look for better or worse. In Japan, suits are just part of daily life. Most people wear them to work, and because we tend to work long hours, you stay in that suit all day and into the night. After work, you might go straight to dinner with family or colleagues. There&rsquo;s no time to go home and change. The suit just becomes part of your rhythm. So, for me, the jacket is familiar. It&rsquo;s lifestyle. And because I work in fashion, I get to reinterpret it. I usually stick to darker, more nocturnal tones and treat the jacket like a canvas. It reflects my mood. I can dress it up, dress it down, clash it with something unexpected. That&rsquo;s the fun of it. Even within something traditional, there&rsquo;s always room to play.

Photography courtesy of Rizzoli.

An Exclusive Interview With Poggy on His New Book and the Art of Getting Dressed

L'OFFICIEL HOMMES PHILIPPINES MARCH 2026 - Andres Muhlach ₱600

An Exclusive Interview With Poggy on His New Book and the Art of Getting Dressed

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