ASATO, From the Beginning

Before ASATO was a brand, it was a philosophy.

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Asato Kitamura grew up surrounded by incense smoke and religious embrace, with the soft glow of Buddhist scrolls illuminating his family’s home. Raised in a Nichiren-Shoshu Buddhist household, he was steeped in rituals meant to bring clarity and healing. But like many of us, Asato carried a quiet storm of emotions he didn’t yet have the words for.

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He found that language, not in words, but in garments.

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Fashion became his altar. A place where grief could be stitched into something soft and comforting. Where the ache of imperfection could be draped across the body like a soldier’s armor. ASATO was born out of that need to understand and transform pain, not to escape it. 

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Throughout a decade of hands-on experience in design, development, and patternmaking, Kitamura built emotional landscapes that are crafted with complexity and compassion. Every seam and fold alone is a meditation on what it means to be human.

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At its core, ASATO invites you into a ritual of self-affirmation. It’s a brand for the ones still healing, the ones learning to see their scars as consecrated, the ones who find value where others overlook. We believe that clothing can hold space for transformation. That our wounds can clothe us in power.