All products featured on GQ are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
If you didn’t think Kapital was invited to the annual Memorial Day deals gathering, you thought wrong. We’re just as surprised as you are, though: the cult-loved Japanese brand is a great hang, we’re sure, but its stuff rarely goes on sale. So imagine our delight when we stumbled upon a treasure trove of its fantastically freaky wares—hundreds of products strong!—discounted on Mr Porter ahead of the holiday weekend. Frankly, we still can’t quite believe it ourselves. But now is not the time to ask questions: now is the time to pinch yourself, just in case, and then buy up as much of the brand’s jeans, fleeces, and knits as your credit card will allow.
What do you need to know about Kapital? This explainer is a great place to start, but since time is of the essence we’ll give you the SparkNotes. In 1984, Toshikiyo Hirata founded the brand as a denim mill, and for 18 years it produced just that. Until that, is, Toshikiyo’s son, Kiro, left his job at the equally venerable Japanese label 45RPM to start designing clothing for his old man. Ever since Kiro came aboard, the brand has been churning out some of the most intricate, whimsical, goofy, and coveted menswear on the entire dang planet.
Kapital has been available at retailers stateside since the early 2010s, but it really started hitting its stride more recently, scoring cosigns from oft-fêted dressers Jonah Hill, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and John Mayer, to name just a few. And for good reason. Whatever you’re into, Kapital probably does it inimitably: jeans, fleeces, knits, pants, shorts, accessories, jackets, footwear…you name it. And right now, all that and more is on sale. Here’s where to start.
Standard-Setting Freaky Jeans
Kapital’s original raison d’être still represents one of the categories it does best, and the brand’s distressed, appliquéd, or repaired denim naturally gets a lot of shine. A jacquard-woven beach scene on a raw denim sack coat? Sounds about right. The reversible Coneybowy is both fun to say and fun to wear, thanks, in part, to that sweet cropped silhouette. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Cloud-Soft Fleece Jackets
Over the years, Kapital’s fleece jackets have become as much of a calling card as its jeans. What started as a gonzo remix of the classic Patagonia Snap T—down to the iconic beige-and-blue color—has evolved into a range of delightfully absurd printed, sashiko-stitched, and embroidered options.
Gnarly Knits
Kapital has plenty of signature pieces to its name—the bones jeans, the playing cards western shirt, the Kamakura anorak with horns—but its knits might be the best of the bunch. They largely fall into two camps: the Smiley Elbows (a.k.a. the 5G Cotton Knit, which has birthed multiple spinoffs) and the Kapital Koogi (a.k.a. the 7G Gaudy Knit, which boasts several spinoffs of its own). For the record, those deserve marquee placement. But let the record also show that any sweaters that fall outside of those camps hit just as hard.
Absolutely Unhinged Pants
Kapital doesn’t really do “normal” pants or shorts. For the most part, it traffics in the wide and wild. Hilarious prints, mind-bending patchwork, kaleidoscopic refractions, doctorate-level repairs, handstitching labored over long enough to warrant a few days of PTO…anything but normal, basically. If you’re looking to spice up your pants rotation, you came to the right place.
Wild-Style Finishing Touches
A few years ago, Kapital sold a miniature, fully-functioning denim jacket with a key rack on the inside and the words “Fuck Key” embroidered on the outside. (No, really. Look it up.) And that pretty much sums up its approach to accessories. Slip your feet into a pair of its smiley face socks and you’ll understand why they inspire such an ardent following. The brand puts smiley faces on shoes, beanies, and jewelry, too, but they rarely run anything back—so if you see something you like, smash that “buy” button.
