NO Funny Business

Masayuki Ino thinks he is a humorous guy. His entourage agrees for the most part - coming to a consensus that he is a "serious-funny" individual, but when one's sense of amusement materialises in a collection that reverberates an ethos of vim, vigour and vitality, perhaps humour should not be a quality to be taken too lightly.

- Vanessa Grace Ng 

Doublet founder Masayuki Ino is not too different from most. He goes for jogs and enjoys a good breakfast. He has a favourite TV show and childhood memory - Japanese comedy Downtown and Tokyo Disneyland. But it is perhaps what is done with this appreciation for the world that sets the first Japanese LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers winner apart.

On the surface, Ino uses Doublet to gratify with a palpable levity - a trait which he brings to the conversation. Ino and his brand lie proximally close on the humour spectrum, a fair evaluation when the Japanese designer incessantly and consecutively salutes "hello" five times to elicit a laugh. Throughout his 30-minute conversation with Men's Folio, not more than three minutes go by without laughter. While he sobers into pensiveness when his quoted "bottomless well of inspiration" is brought up, the tension is soon broken with an endearing burst of hysterics as he admits, "I don't remember answering that, honestly." And when asked if one of Ino's heroes - Jeremy Scott's departure from Moschino is concerning for the community of humour-informed designers, he animatedly interjects. "I want to take over [laughs]," he says, before quickly retorting, "joke, joke, joke!" Ino resets to state that Scott's departure does not affect him and that he - in fact - would not mind taking on a creative directorial position at a larger house, but it "depends on where".

When it comes to his brand, Ino does not take it as a joking manner. He enthusiastically boasts about Doublet's latest store space at COMO Orchard and its installation, which was conceptualised and then built by the team including himself. "It's surreal and exciting for us. We've never done a show in a shop," referring to the trunk presentation staged in coordination with Club 21.