PORTER at 90: Stitching the Past Into the Future
The Japanese accessory brand adds plant-based nylon to its iconic bag designs and celebrates its 90th anniversary with a pop-up in New York City
This year, PORTER Yoshida celebrates its 90th anniversary, an extraordinary milestone in a fashion landscape where longevity and relevance rarely align. For creative director Kenichiro Matsubara, the secret has been a blend of evolution and steadfastness. “We’ve stayed relevant by collaborating with other artists and brands, and by always keeping up with what a certain generation is interested in,” he says. “But no matter what, we remain committed to putting heart and soul into every stitch.”
The Tanker Series, one of PORTER’s most iconic lines, recently marked its 40th anniversary. Rather than rely on color changes or endless collaborations, Matsubara’s team saw the moment as an opportunity to reset. “We wondered what the next thing could be,” he recalls. “We had already done collaborations and new colorways, so we wanted a new approach — an approach that would serve us long-term.”
That approach came in the form of a partnership with textile company Toray to create a plant-based nylon. “We thought, how can we keep the product’s aesthetic but change it? That was the starting point,” Matsubara explains. The resulting fabric both honors the Tanker’s design codes and propels the brand into the future. “This was something we were very excited about because it would take us further forward.”
At the heart of PORTER’s identity is the mantra that bags are “tools before decoration.” While the broader fashion landscape sees function and style blending together, Matsubara is clear about PORTER’s priorities. “There’s a lot of clothing and accessories made for rugged outdoors that people now wear in everyday life,” he observes. “So functionality has blended with style. But for us, a bag’s purpose is to protect the things you’re carrying — your personal artifacts, your items. That always comes first.”
Once that need is met, design enters. “Aesthetics and fashion can be added on top of the functional aspect,” he says. “At its core, a PORTER bag will always be a functional tool that secures and protects your belongings.”
Function, however, doesn’t preclude beauty. The brand’s recent collaboration with Danish designer Cecile Bahnsen revealed a new side of PORTER. “Our hold bags are pretty masculine and utilitarian,” Matsubara admits. “But through this collaboration, we learned the importance of decoration, of embellishment and of appealing to a more feminine audience.”
Other projects push in the opposite direction. The Monochrome series responds to cultural shifts around scale and necessity. “We saw that the personal items people carry — wallets and other small things — are getting smaller,” Matsubara explains. “So the idea was to create one bag that fits everything you need. You don’t need another, bigger bag. It’s just one, simple, all-in-one piece.”
The anniversary celebrations have stretched across Paris and Bangkok, but the New York pop-up holds special meaning. “For the U.S. audience, we’ve only done wholesale for the last 10 years,” Matsubara says. “This is the first time customers can actually read about the pop-up and interact with the product firsthand.” The intention is tactile: “We want the audience to come and actually touch and feel the product, to experience the difference in the new materials like the plant-based nylon.”
Though this year marks a milestone, Matsubara doesn’t see it as an endpoint. “Even though this is the 90th anniversary, it’s actually the start of a new process,” he insists. “Every day is a new day, that’s our mantra. We take customer feedback and implement it into the product to make it better.”
While there are other collaborations in the works (though still under wraps), what excites Matsubara most, however, isn’t a single drop or collection but the rhythm of continuous evolution. “We treat every day as a new beginning,” he says. “That’s how we keep moving forward.”
What are your thoughts?