The Reason We Exist
The Reason We Exist
Saya Mizushima started Mind Tech Lab Wave in 2019 after spending six years as a pattern cutter at a mid-market lingerie label in Osaka. The work was technically precise and commercially successful. It was also, she decided, wrong. Every season the brief was the same: reduce the fabric cost by eight percent, adjust the sizing to fit a narrower demographic, and photograph the result on a body that bore no relation to the customer. She left in March 2019 and opened a small atelier on Fuyacho-dori in Kyoto's Nakagyo-ku with two sewing machines, a bolt of Italian Lycra, and no investors.
The first collection was twelve pieces. Saya sold them through a single Instagram post and a table at a design market in Shimogyo-ku. They sold out in four days. She did not immediately scale. Instead, she spent the following six months refining the grading system, visiting the Calais lace mill in person, and testing three different elastic suppliers before settling on a German-made elastic that holds its shape through 200 wash cycles without degrading. The second collection launched in spring 2020 with twenty pieces. The third, in autumn 2020, had thirty. Growth was deliberate and slow, and that was the point.
Saya Mizushima trained as a pattern cutter at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, graduating in 2013. She spent the next six years at a mid-market lingerie label in Osaka, where she became lead pattern cutter by 2016. In 2019 she walked away from a stable salary and a promotion offer to open Mind Tech Lab Wave in Kyoto with her own savings and no outside funding. She visited the Calais lace mill herself before placing a single order. She still cuts every pattern by hand. She runs twice a week along the Kamo River and believes that how a garment moves when you walk is more important than how it photographs.