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Più di 7 Anni
I carried that bolt of lace back from Normandy in my carry-on luggage.
The Story Behind Core Path Lab Nex
Emiko Harashima started Core Path Lab Nex in the spring of 2019 from a rented room in Nakameguro, with a single industrial sewing machine, a bolt of Calais lace she had carried back from a trip to Normandy, and a very specific frustration: she could not find lingerie that felt both beautiful and honest. She had spent six years before that working as a pattern cutter for a mid-size ready-to-wear label in Shibuya, learning how garments are made at scale and deciding, quietly, that scale was not what she wanted. The first twelve bralettes she made sold out in four days through a single Instagram post. She took that as a sign.
Il mestiere
The method has not changed much since then. Fabrics come from three suppliers: the Calais mill for lace, a family-run weaver in Nishiwaki for cotton voile, and a small importer in Osaka who sources deadstock silk from Italian mills. The Kyoto dye house, Irodori-ya, has been mixing the blush and sand tones since 2020, and the colour shifts slightly from batch to batch because the plant pigments respond to the season. Emiko considers this a feature, not a flaw. Each piece is cut by hand on a long wooden table in the studio, sewn by one of three seamstresses, and pressed before it is folded into its cotton pouch.
Emiko Harashima trained as a pattern cutter in Tokyo, spending six years at a Shibuya-based ready-to-wear label before founding Core Path Lab Nex in 2019. A trip to Normandy in the winter of 2018 introduced her to the Calais lace mills that now supply the studio, and she returned with a bolt of fabric and a clear idea of what she wanted to make. She bakes bread on Sunday mornings, keeps a small collection of vintage French lingerie catalogues, and believes that a well-cut bralette should feel like wearing nothing at all.