TCB (which stands for Two Cats Brand or Taking Care of Business) is a Japanese label founded in Kojima by Hajime Inoue in 2012. It specializes in reproductions of the classic American denim icons produced from the 1920s to the 1960s.
America has always been a presence in Hajime ever since he used to play baseball as a child in Japan. Little by little he started to take an increasing interest in classic American culture, which led to his passion for vintage workwear and especially the Levi’s models of the 1940s and ‘50s, their textures and the character and fades these jeans acquired over time.
A short while later, Inoue-San decided he would try to reproduce those classic denim models under his own label, and what better place to do it than in Kojima, in Okayama Prefecture, a land of tradition and the home of Japanese denim artisans. After hundreds and hundreds of trials and 15 years of learning he not only succeeded in reproducing the classic American jeans that awakened so much passion in him; he even improved on the original quality of those models.
TCB and the work of Inoue-San perfectly represent the Japanese concept of “Takumi” or, what comes to the same thing, craftsmanship taken to the highest expression and understood as a way of life. Among his garments we can find some of the highest-quality reproductions we have ever seen, made in his own workshop on sewing machines more than a hundred years.
