The Doublet clothing brand showcased their Fall/Winter 2025 collection at Menswear Paris Fashion Week on January 26, 2025. The collection focused on the theme “VILLAIN”, created by the designer Masayuki Ino.
During the show, guests discovered puffy red stress balls labeled “Someone’s heart” placed on their seats, with notes placed underneath stating “There are so many people with deep cracks in this world.” They enhanced the ambiance with flashes of lightning and eerie sound effects of footsteps echoing through a thunderstorm.
Fictional villains inspired some of the designs of the clothing, such as the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland and Dracula. One design in particular, modeled by “Jesse”, notably resembles Yoshikage Kira. Kira is the main antagonist of the fourth part of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series, Diamond is Unbreakable. Coincidentally, today (January 30) is also Yoshikage Kira’s birthday.
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Some commenters brought up that the design could be referencing Joker from the Batman series rather than Kira. However, the designer, Masayuki Ino, is an avid fan of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, having mentioned in several interviews and blog posts that it is his favorite manga. In 2017, Ino stated that his motto is a quote from Rohan Kishibe, “Reality is the lifeblood that makes a work pulse with energy! Reality itself is entertainment!”.1 In 2019, he said the game that he’s played the most was JoJo’s Venture on Arcade, where he mained Devo the Cursed.2 In 2020, he shared that he purchased Hirohiko Araki’s Manga Techniques book during the COVID-19 lockdown.3
I still love JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to this day.
When I first saw it, it was the chapter where Kakyoin made his debut. The scene where Kakyoin comes out of the nurse was so disturbing that I dropped it.
Then, after a while, I picked it up again and saw the part where D’Arby says, “Let’s stake our souls.”
Later, there were the cover pages where DIO breaks Hierophant Green’s barrier, and the one where Yoshikage Kira blows up Shigechi. Being from the Jump generation, that’s when I got hooked. I started buying the collected volumes at secondhand bookstores, and to this day, I’m a big fan of JoJo, from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to JoJolion.
Recently, I’ve been thinking that the most interesting Stand idea is from the sixth part, Bohemian Rhapsody.
The ability is to bring the protagonist of a story into the real world and have the story complete just like it’s supposed to.
Characters like Atom, Mickey, and Pinocchio pop out, and it’s a Stand brimming with identity that pushes the boundaries of copyright.
In the end, Gogh appears in real life and paints a superhero that absorbs everything, returning everything back to normal, completing the cycle.
I took a roundabout path just to say this, but manga is truly creative, isn’t it?
Masayuki Ino (March 15, 2020)4
Doublet’s VILLAIN Collection
Bend a plastic sheet and there will be a thin white line. The destruction creates tiny cracks where it’s bent. Such manufacturing “defects” are unforgivable evil. A bent sheet of plastic is a “villain” who must be eradicated.
The villain gave a hint for a new kind of fabric. It made it possible to trap “functions” in the holes created by the defects. For instance, trapping insect repellents in them can save people from malaria. The villain gave us a new material.
There are so many people with deep cracks in this world. They’re often misunderstood and rejected as being out of alignment. People enforce their righteousness on them and call them worthless. Their innate potentials are often ignored.
What is this thing called righteousness? Righteous in the eyes of whom? There’s no need to submit to such imposition. When it’s bent, tiny cracks create spaces for new things to arise.
Masayuki Ino
Doublet FW2025-26 “VILLAIN” Video
About Masayuki Ino, Founder of Doublet
Masayuki Ino was born in 1979 in Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture. After graduating from Tokyo Mode Gakuen, he joined a major apparel company before becoming independent. He did not establish his own brand but worked at a belt factory in Asakusa and studied under Mihara Yasuhiro of Maison MIHARA YASUHIRO. In 2012, he became independent and founded Doublet. In 2018, he received the LVMH Prize Grand Prix, becoming the first Asian to do so.
Sources
Photos: Vogue, SHOWstudio, Instagram, Shueisha/Lucky Land Communications (Yoshikage Kira)
- FashionSnap Interview (2017) ↩︎
- WWD Japan Interview (2019) ↩︎
- FashionSnap Article (2020) ↩︎
- Masayuki Ino’s Blog (2020) ↩︎