Doublet’s “Itadakimasu”: Recycled Fishing Nets, Food Memory, and Fashion

“Itadakimasu” is a short phrase spoken before a meal in Japan. In doublet’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, that word became clothing. Fishing nets, eggshell membranes, fish leather, game leather, agriculture, fishing, eating, receiving life. Masayuki Ino turned a phrase often spoken casually at the table into a material story for the Paris runway.

Doublet’s official statement explains the collection as a translation into clothing of the gratitude embodied in the word “itadakimasu”: respect for lives, nature, and the people who cultivate and harvest our food. Our lives are sustained by food raised, harvested, caught, and carried by people working in primary industries. The word that remembers that enormous circle appears here as fabric.

The symbolic material is recycled fishing net. MURON® supplied filament made entirely from discarded fishing nets collected in Japan, as well as fabrics woven with MURON® as the weft yarn, for some looks in doublet’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Clothing becomes the second life of a tool once used at sea. A net that caught fish now wraps the human body. That is where the weight of “itadakimasu” begins.

The collection: turning a pre-meal phrase into clothing

Fashion Week Online described doublet’s Spring/Summer 2026 as a collection that used overlooked materials: fishing nets once used in golden eye snapper fishing, fish leather sourced from Kochi’s fishing ports, discarded eggshell membranes, and game leather. Office Magazine also read the season as clothing that translates the spirit of gratitude contained in “itadakimasu.”

According to MURON®, the company supplied doublet with filament made entirely from discarded fishing nets collected in Japan, and also supplied fabrics woven using MURON® as the weft yarn. The material appeared in some of the looks presented during doublet’s Paris show. The point is not just that a sustainable material was used. The material sits at the center of the story.

A fishing net is a tool of marine labor. It catches fish, wears down, and if discarded badly can become marine debris. Regenerated, it becomes fiber, yarn, and fabric. Doublet connects that transformation to “itadakimasu.” Eating and dressing enter the same cycle.

What is doublet? Everyday clothes with strangeness

Doublet was founded in 2012 by designer Masayuki Ino and pattern maker Takashi Murakami. The LVMH Prize profile says Ino was born in Gunma in 1979, graduated from Tokyo Mode Academy, gained experience as a shoes and accessories head designer at MIHARAYASUHIRO, and then established doublet.

The brand begins with basic, standard everyday garments. But something strange always enters. A hoodie, T-shirt, tracksuit, or jacket looks familiar until something shifts: proportion, text, material, joke, illusion, gender, or expectation. A joke becomes serious, and seriousness begins to look like a joke.

This language became globally visible in 2018, when Ino won the Grand Prix of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, becoming the first Japanese designer to win the award. Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo’s interview notes that the win brought him sudden international attention.

GQ read the LVMH Prize’s selection of doublet as a sign that luxury was moving decisively toward streetwear. Doublet was not a conventional tailoring prodigy. Its universe was graphics, jerseys, hoodies, discomfort, gender fluidity, and humor. That world entered the center of fashion in 2018.

Why “itadakimasu”?

“Itadakimasu” is one of the harder Japanese words to translate. Literally, it means “I humbly receive,” but “let’s eat” is not enough. It carries prayer, gratitude for life, respect for the cook, appreciation of ingredients, family discipline, school-lunch ritual, and daily habit.

Eating is the most ordinary act, but also one of the most violent. We receive life. Plants are cut. Fish are caught. Animals are slaughtered. Farmers, fishers, livestock workers, transporters, shopkeepers, cooks, families — many people and natural forces stand behind a meal. “Itadakimasu” compresses that complexity into one phrase.

It is very doublet to turn that phrase into clothing. Ino’s clothes often shift what is too familiar to see. The pre-meal word is so ordinary that its weight disappears. On the runway, the word becomes heavy again. Clothing begins to wear the shadow of eating.

Fishing nets become clothing: marine waste and material circulation

Discarded fishing nets are often discussed as a major part of the marine debris problem. A JapanGov Kizuna article notes that preserving ocean abundance for future generations requires solving marine debris, and that nets and other fishing gear make up a significant portion of sea trash. It describes a startup based in a northern Japanese fishing port that buys old unusable nets from fishing crews and upcycles them into nylon fibers.

Using discarded fishing nets in fashion has two meanings. One is environmental: something that might pollute the sea is returned to circulation as material. The other is narrative: the garment carries memory of the sea, fishers, fish, tables, ports, and regions.

In doublet’s “ITADAKIMASU,” these meanings overlap. The fishing net is not merely an eco-material. It is a material with the memory of catching fish and feeding people. When a net becomes clothing, the wearer carries the second half of marine labor.

Golden eye snapper, fish leather, eggshell membrane: reading food byproducts

Fashion Week Online’s account of doublet SS26 referenced nets from golden eye snapper fishing, fish leather from Kochi’s fishing ports, discarded eggshell membranes, and game leather. This is not only a list of unusual materials. It is a return of food-industry byproducts and overlooked surroundings to the surface of fashion.

Fish leather is both the remainder of a fish that has been eaten and a material with new possibilities. Eggshell membrane is a byproduct of egg use, but also a functional material. Game leather carries contexts of wild animals, region, hunting, food culture, and ecological management.

“Itadakimasu” is powerful because it can hold all these byproducts inside the same circle. Eating does not end with the edible part. Nets, skins, membranes, bones, workers, ports, mountains, fields, distribution — clothing can make these invisible elements visible.

Sky High Farm and society through food

Fashion Week Online also noted doublet’s encounter with the philosophy of Sky High Farm, an organization known for thinking about society through food. Growing, distributing, supporting, and sharing food are not only agricultural acts. They design society.

It makes sense that doublet would be interested. The brand often flips hidden structures inside daily life into view. The back of a hoodie. The text on a T-shirt. Convenience, games, humor, ordinary objects. This time, the hidden structure is food: agriculture, fishing, primary industry, waste, circulation, gratitude. The pre-meal word reveals the social system behind the meal.

Doublet’s strength: sustainability without sermon

Sustainable fashion can easily become correct but dull: material descriptions, certifications, reduction percentages, environmental impact. These things matter, but they do not automatically make clothing alive. Doublet’s strength is that it turns sustainability into story, joke, strangeness, and bodily sensation rather than sermon.

“Itadakimasu” is not an environmental slogan. It is a word spoken before daily meals. That is why it is deep. The reason for using discarded fishing nets is not only numerical. It connects to gratitude for eating. The net that caught fish becomes clothing. Fish skin becomes material. Egg membrane enters a fabric context. Environmental language suddenly becomes domestic.

Ino does not make heavy themes look only heavy. He inserts humor and oddness. The viewer is surprised first, then laughs, then thinks. Doublet’s clothes often work in that order.

Saying “itadakimasu” in Paris

It also matters that the collection was shown in Paris. “Itadakimasu” is a Japanese word and a Japanese table ritual. But receiving life, thanking food labor, and transforming waste into material are global questions.

To use “itadakimasu” on a Paris runway is not simply to exoticize Japanese culture. It uses a very ordinary Japanese word to ask a global question. What are we eating? Who made it? What is discarded? Can what is discarded live again in another form?

Fashion often seems distant from food: beautiful clothes, venues, photographs, models, editors. But clothing and food are both supported by material, labor, land, water, logistics, and waste. Doublet showed the shared underside.

JAPAN.co.jp view

Doublet’s “ITADAKIMASU” is one of the most Japanese and most global collections of Spring/Summer 2026. Its Japaneseness does not come from kimono or traditional pattern. It comes from a table word. Its global force comes from universal issues: marine waste, primary industries, material circulation, and food labor.

Turning discarded fishing nets into clothing is an environmental act. But in doublet, it becomes more than that. A fishing net catches fish. Fish become food. Food is life. Life connects to “itadakimasu.” The material choice deepens the word.

Masayuki Ino’s clothes often begin with a small disturbance in ordinary life. This time, a familiar pre-meal phrase connects the sea, port, farm, waste, and body. It is poetic before it is sustainable, and realistic before it is poetic. That order feels exactly like doublet.

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