About Erica Kochi

Made in Japan. Designed in California.

Erica Kochi makes men's shirts that are more interesting than the default, and that men actually wear.

How it started

In 2022, Erica started sewing shirts for her husband in their backyard cottage in Berkeley. His closet was full of light-blue and striped shirts off the rack. The new shirts got noticed, and colleagues kept asking where he got them. So she made more for friends. The ones people loved most were cut from Japanese fabrics with a motif you remember: animals, flowers, sushi.

At the end of 2025 she went to Japan to find a factory and the fabrics for a real collection. These are those shirts.

Why Japan

For Erica, Japan isn't a sourcing destination. It's part of her heritage, and it's where her eye for fabric comes from. Japanese mills weave and print cotton in small runs with a level of care that's hard to find elsewhere: dobbies with the pattern woven in instead of printed, micro-wale corduroy fine enough for a dress shirt, indigo that goes back centuries. Erica buys directly, often only a few bolts of a fabric.

The shirts are cut and sewn in Japan too, at a small factory in Nagano Prefecture, in the Japanese Alps, where everyone changes into slippers at the door and the stitching is checked under a magnifying glass.

Once a fabric sells out, it rarely comes back.

For him, often from her

Plenty of men's shirts are chosen by the woman in his life. Erica designs for both of you: interesting enough that you'll want to give it, and easy enough that he'll wear it on a Tuesday at the office and again at dinner on Saturday.

Follow Erica in Japan and at home: @ericakochi