While workwear has its detractors, there’s no denying its growing influence on the world of menswear. You only need to look at the sharp increase in the amount of buffalo plaid, boots and flannel in any high street store to see the influence the movement has had. Whilst the movement has several stalwarts (many of whom we’ve featured already) one of the premier names behind the revival is buyer turned designer, Daiki Suzuki.

Suzuki got his start as a sales person in Japan before eventually moving into buying. After working in this sector for two decades (he got his start back in the 1970s) he decided to branch out and start his own label, Engineered Garments. The label is a Japanese take on Americana, making products like corduroy trousers, casual blazers and even capes, using archive clothing as a launching pad and updating the fit. The latter point is the defining difference between E.G and a reproduction company like The Real McCoys.

His work at Engineered Garments caught the attention of Woolrich, who soon hired him to rework their Woolrich Woolen Mills line. As Daiki Suzuki noted in a Refinery29 interview, the two brands weren’t exactly world apart as he used to use Woolrich fabrics on his Engineered Garments pieces.

A stickler for authenticity, All of Engineered Garments pieces are made in the USA. “Both WWM and EG are made in the NYC Garment Center and various other specialty factories all across the US. We sometimes use our neighbour in north Canada, depending on what we’re looking to make”.

As for the fabrics, he says that “it’s always in the form of traditional American fabrics or fabrics utilized by American manufacturers in the past”. Suzuki notes that “Domestically there are always Woolrich Woolens, uniform fabrics, dead stock fabrics from the 1980s and various other things that cross our path.”

When it comes to the topic of prestige not being enough to sell clothing anymore Suzuki states that “There is value and cost in raw materials, manufacturing methods (including responsible production), intellectual property and development that is laborious, costly and time consuming”. He goes to say “Then there is all the people you support when purchasing a product, from the designer to the manufacture to the retailer and plenty of other people in between. [To sum up] in general good things cost more.”