Daisuke Obana looks back at American athletic clubs, 1920s physical culture and classic Ivy dressing to create a Spring 2027 wardrobe where tailoring is meant to move, work and age.
For Spring 2027, N.Hoolywood creative director Daisuke Obana returns to one of the great foundations of modern menswear: American Ivy style. But nostalgia isn’t really the point.
Instead, Obana takes the codes of traditional American dressing and puts them through something more physical. Tailoring meets training clothes. Prep encounters workwear. Immaculate trousers are allowed to wrinkle, fade and acquire character.
The collection is titled “Physical Culture,” and its premise gives N.Hoolywood one of the more intriguing menswear propositions of the Spring/Summer 2027 season.
From Ivy League to the Athletic Club
The starting point reaches back to Obana’s own history.
Before establishing N.Hoolywood, the designer worked with vintage clothing in Japan during the 1990s. Alongside the era’s obsession with American denim and vintage sportswear, Obana remembers another kind of collector: men searching for Ivy and traditional American garments and wearing them with almost obsessive refinement.
That memory resurfaced when N.Hoolywood began developing a capsule project with Brooks Brothers.
Research subsequently took Obana and his team to the United States, including the New York and Los Angeles Athletic Clubs, where they explored archives and studied the architecture, facilities and equipment associated with historic athletic culture.
Their attention eventually settled on the physical culture and rowing traditions of the 1920s—an era when exercise, social life and traditional dress existed much closer together than they do today.
The result isn’t costume.
It’s N.Hoolywood asking what those ideas might look like on a man dressing now.
Meet “Watora”
Inside the N.Hoolywood studio, the team developed its own word for the experiment: “Watora,” combining “Work” and “Traditional.”
It’s an excellent description of what happens throughout Spring 2027.
Recognizable menswear archetypes remain everywhere—blazers, dress shirts, polos, sweaters, pleated trousers and traditional checks—but their formality is repeatedly disrupted.
Workwear construction enters tailored clothing. Technical materials appear beside classic fabrics. Athletic pieces sit comfortably alongside suits.
A marinière gains elbow patches. Trousers arrive marked with paint-like splatters. A blazer traditionally associated with tailoring is reconstructed in denim.
Nothing feels entirely pristine.
And that’s precisely where the collection becomes interesting.
The Fashionably Male View: The Gentleman Gets Physical
There is an appealing masculinity to the Spring 2027 proposition because N.Hoolywood doesn’t separate elegance from physicality.
The collection imagines men who can wear a blazer but aren’t afraid to sweat in their clothes.
Tank tops, athletic shorts and long-sleeve tees establish the training-room vocabulary, while high-waisted pleated trousers, shirting and tailoring pull the wardrobe back toward the gentleman.
Sweaters are tucked into trousers. Shorts are rolled at the hem. Pants sit high at the waist.
The styling occasionally feels like discovering an old photograph of a university rowing team—but looking closer and realizing that the clothes belong to the present.
That’s an important distinction.
Rather than turning Ivy style into another perfectly pressed prep revival, Obana allows it to become worn, muscular and imperfect.
Clothes That Look Better After Living in Them
Patina is central to the collection.
Workwear traditionally becomes more personal through use: denim fades, cotton softens, surfaces become marked and garments slowly conform to their wearer.
N.Hoolywood applies that philosophy to traditional menswear.
It changes the emotional quality of the clothes. Instead of presenting the blazer, sweater or trouser as something that needs to remain untouched, Spring 2027 suggests that elegance can improve through experience.
It’s an especially effective idea when connected to “Physical Culture.”
The body isn’t merely something upon which these clothes are displayed. Movement becomes part of how the clothes acquire their identity.
American Menswear, Seen Through Japan
There is another layer here that makes N.Hoolywood’s relationship with Ivy particularly compelling.
Japan has spent decades studying, collecting and reinterpretating American menswear with extraordinary attention to detail. Obana approaches this history with the eye of someone who came through vintage culture, understands the original references and still has little interest in simply reproducing them.
Spring 2027 therefore feels familiar without becoming conservative.
Traditional colors, stripes, checks and tailoring codes provide the foundation, while oversized proportions, technical fabrication, sportswear and utility details pull everything forward.
The silhouettes are relaxed without becoming shapeless.
There is room around the body. Jackets and sleeves gain volume. Trousers fall generously. Shorts expose more leg and bring the athletic references directly into the silhouette.
The contrast works.
Brooks Brothers, Baracuta, Dickies and Danner
The collaborations make Obana’s exploration of American clothing even more literal.
Brooks Brothers is particularly significant. Among the collaborative pieces is a denim blazer informed by the traditional rowing jacket, bringing together American tailoring heritage and N.Hoolywood’s interest in workwear.
A short-sleeve Brooks Brothers collaboration also incorporates the house’s Golden Fleece emblem.
Elsewhere, Baracuta’s G4 driving jacket is reconsidered with a roomier body and sleeves against a shorter length, changing the familiar proportions of the British classic.
Dickies and Danner further reinforce the utilitarian side of the collection, connecting the polished world of Ivy with work and outdoor clothing.
Rather than feeling like logos added for collaboration value, the partnerships make sense within Obana’s broader argument: traditional menswear, workwear and athletic clothing have always shared more territory than their individual categories suggest.
A Different Kind of Prep for Spring 2027
Prep has returned to the menswear conversation repeatedly in recent seasons, but N.Hoolywood offers something more nuanced than simply putting another generation of men into loafers and collegiate sweaters.
Obana lets tradition get dirty.
He lets it exercise.
He lets it age.
That gives Spring 2027 an appealing sense of freedom beneath all its discipline.
A blazer doesn’t stop being elegant because it’s denim. A pleated trouser doesn’t lose sophistication because it is worn casually. Athletic clothing doesn’t necessarily have to exist separately from tailoring.
And the male wardrobe doesn’t have to choose between refinement and utility.
N.Hoolywood Spring 2027 ultimately makes its case through that tension.
Work. Tradition. Sport. Tailoring.
Creative Direction: Daisuke Obana @daisuke_obana
Art Direction, Photographer: Hisashi Iesaka(Officeroom) @yeahsacker
Stylist: TEPPEI @stylist_teppei
Stylist Assistant: Taira Sakamoto @taira__sakamoto / Yu Takahara @yutkhr_a
Hair: KENSHIN(EPO LABO) @kenshinasano
Hair Support: Akane Yamasaki
Make-Up: UDA @uda.kesho
Make-Up Support: Arina Nishi @arn_arina / Maki Ihara @maki_iii
Lighting Director: Michinaru Marui(Toio) @mmarui
Lighting: Aya Kawamata / Leo Araki / Yuki Saito
Model: CADE(HELLO TOKYO) @nothing.but.fl0wers / CADE LUCAS(AVOCADO) @hihicade / Campbell(WEST) @campbell.carr / Darri(Bravo) @darri.gudmundsson / Erick(Bravo) @africancubism /
FRANCIS(ACTIVA) @f_.xr.vc_ / Mo(AVOCADO) @morrriiitz / Taran Jones(HELLO TOKYO) @taran_jones1 / Thomas(Image) @thomas_gnr_ / Wylie(Image) @wyliebr0wn / THOMAS SIMPSON(EXILES) @t.smpsn
Transportation: Daisuke Nakashima(NASH INC.) @d.nakashima0529 / Shuto Ishiwatari(NASH INC.) @and1_syuto_82 @nash.tokyo
Production Manager: Takaaki Yamada(Officeroom) @otakuomorihigashi
Production: Kotaro Hosobuchi(Officeroom) @ktarokrkr@officeroom_inc
