Haruka Nishimoto started Vault Wave Mind Grid in 2019 after seven years working as a pattern-maker for a mid-size lingerie manufacturer in Osaka. She was good at the job. She was also tired of watching beautiful fabrics get cut into pieces that fit no one particularly well, then shipped in quantities that guaranteed a third of them would end up on a markdown rail. She moved to Tokyo in late 2018, rented a small studio in Minami-Aoyama, and spent six months making samples before she sold a single thing.
I still cut the first sample of every new style myself.Vault Wave Mind Grid
The first collection, released in April 2019, was twelve pieces: four bra styles, three brief cuts, and five swimwear separates. She sold them through a single pop-up at a friend's gallery in Daikanyama over one weekend. Everything sold. She did not immediately scale up. Instead, she spent the following year refining the fit, sourcing better elastic from a supplier in Lyon, and finding the Nishijin mill that now provides her silk-blend lining fabric. The second collection, in April 2020, was fifteen pieces. The third was eighteen. The number grows slowly, deliberately.
Today Vault Wave Mind Grid operates from a small atelier and showroom at 3-5-12 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo. The team is six people. Haruka still cuts the first sample of every new style herself. The collection is available online and by appointment at the atelier. Wholesale inquiries are considered once a year, in November, and the answer is usually no. That is not a policy designed to seem exclusive. It is a policy designed to keep the work honest.