Memory on Every Tag
In the spring of 2021, Daiki Suzuki of Engineered Garments approached GAKU to redesign the brand's hang tags — introducing new photography and a separate "Made in New York" tag. Drawing on the Nepenthes office in Long Island City as a conceptual anchor, the project took shape around a series of photographs by GAKU: frontal, unhurried images of iconic structures such as the Queensboro Bridge and Queens Plaza.
Each image carried a private resonance. In the autumn of 1992, GAKU moved from Tokyo to New York to study. On the morning of his first day at an art school in Manhattan, a packed subway car rounded a bend — and Queens Plaza station suddenly opened up before him, the skyline gleaming in the distance. The feeling that surged through him then has never faded.
As an artist, GAKU had spent years photographing and sketching the city. For these tags, he drew from that personal archive, selecting each image with quiet intention. Together with a "Made in New York" tag — its design sparse and schematic, like a blueprint tracing the skyline — they were attached to every piece in the Spring/Summer 2022 collection.
Each tag rests in silence as part of the garment, holding a New York that, in the end, belongs to whoever is wearing it.
Brand: Engineered Garments
Photography, Artwork, Layout Design: Manabu Gaku Inada
Year: 2022
Photography, Artwork, Layout Design: Manabu Gaku Inada
Year: 2022
Original photographs were carefully reviewed and cropped with close attention to balance, ensuring each image would work within the constraints of the design layout.
Queensboro Bridge and Queens Plaza. Photo by Manabu Gaku Inada. © 2022 Inada Studio Inc. All rights reserved.
The folded tag opens to reveal the Queensboro Bridge on the front-right panel, shot head-on; the back-left panel carries a dynamic, perspectival view of a station platform stretching into the distance, with figures waiting at its edge.
A new pencil drawing was made specifically for the "Made in New York" tag — its lines deliberately faint, lending the piece a quietly nostalgic quality.
The skyline artwork went through multiple variations in both illustration and layout before reaching its final form.
The years spent in New York became lines, then photographs, then a tag.
Every time someone puts it on, their own New York begins.
Every time someone puts it on, their own New York begins.
