Fisherman in Paris
With AIGLE by SETCHU, Satoshi Kuwata asks what fishing clothing might look like if utility and tailoring started from the same place.
The fishing uniform has traditionally had little interest in elegance. Pockets exist because something needs carrying. Waders keep water out. Jackets protect against weather. Almost every detail can be traced backwards to a problem that needed solving. Satoshi Kuwata sees no reason that has to make the resulting clothes inelegant.
For AIGLE by SETCHU, the Japanese designer and committed angler has taken the practical language of fishing and passed it through the considerably more refined world of his Milan-based label SETCHU. The collaboration launched on September 16 and brings together two unusually compatible perspectives. AIGLE contributes more than a century and a half of weather protection, rubber craft and outdoor equipment; Kuwata brings the precise construction and restraint that helped SETCHU win the 2023 LVMH Prize. Fishing supplies the common ground.
The collection doesn't simply reproduce conventional fishing clothing in expensive fabrics. Instead, Kuwata breaks the uniform into its underlying ideas: pockets, protection, modularity and movement. Those ideas appear across tailored jackets with detachable hoods, waterproof fisherman trousers, packable insulation, trench coats, three-in-one systems and multi-pocket safari jackets. AIGLE describes the result as a wardrobe where technical functionality and tailoring meet.
Perhaps more revealing is Kuwata's reasoning. Speaking to Vogue France, he explained that although fishing is a significant part of his life, he never wanted to dress like a stereotypical fisherman. The objective instead was to create clothing that could function in nature without becoming inappropriate the moment its wearer returned to everyday life. That feels like an important distinction. For years, fashion has extracted objects from outdoor culture and removed much of the context that created them. Here, the process works differently. Kuwata isn't observing fishing from afar. He's asking, as someone who fishes, why the performance uniform needs to stop being desirable away from the river. It creates an interesting inversion.
Instead of making fashion look more like fishing equipment, AIGLE by SETCHU makes fishing equipment behave more like a wardrobe. The safari jacket can move between environments. Layers detach. Pockets disappear into tailoring. Waterproof panels appear where the body actually needs them. A repeated A-shaped construction gives the pieces a graphical identity while also creating usable volume. Kuwata summarized the collection to Vogue in three words:
“Fisherman in Paris.”
It's difficult to describe the idea any better.
