Japanese designer Chitose Abe creates clothes that are inherently cool, wholly original, but also extremely practical.
Abe founded the fashion label Sacai—a variation on her maiden name, Sakai—in 1999, about a year after she gave birth. She’d always been interested in fashion, but the demands of having a newborn caused her to focus less on creation and more on function. “I feel like if I didn’t have a daughter, then maybe I’d have designed something different,” Abe said in a recent interview with Net-A-Porter magazine.