Mountain Research

Mountain Research was founded in 2006, but it wasn’t the designer, Kobayashi Setsumasa, first time at the helm of a brand. Instead, in 1993, for 13 years, he led the latter’s predecessor, General Research, through a defining period in Japanese fashion. To understand Mountain Research better, it helps to establish some of the groundwork. As its name suggested, General Research (GR) wasn’t to be pigeonholed by anyone, instead exploring references from punk music, military wear and outdoor performance garments and allowing Kobayashi to ‘research’ these areas to his heart’s content. Without this, we wouldn’t have been blessed with the experimental ‘Parasite’ jackets, to name one of many so-called grails, that are said to have featured close to 100 pockets.