What it had to solve
Clothes are cut from flat cloth, so offcut waste is unavoidable; Kawasaki treats the pattern stage — where the waste accumulates — as the sustainability lever, rather than swapping in new materials.
The idea
Use machine learning and 3D simulation to optimise garment patterns so the fabric that would be thrown away between parts is designed out before cutting.
How it works
ML plus 3D simulation generates optimised pattern layouts, installed inside brands' own production: a HATRA prototype, A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE's TYPE-IX Synflux project jacket, Goldwin's SYN-GRID project feeding The North Face lines, and Kanadevia staff uniforms for the Osaka-Kansai Expo 'Future City' pavilion.
What it did
Kawasaki says the optimisation cuts material use by 10-15% (self-reported in the interview); in May 2026 Synflux became the first Japanese company to win the Global Fashion Summit's Trailblazer Programme grand prize, and it closed a ¥520M funding round in January 2026.
Background
In a WIRED Japan interview published 9 October 2026, Kazuya Kawasaki — speculative fashion designer and CEO of Synflux — describes Algorithmic Couture, a design system that applies machine learning and 3D simulation to optimise garment patterns before the cloth is cut, attacking the offcut waste that is inevitable when flat fabric is carved into body-fitting parts. He says the optimisation alone reduces material use by 10-15% (self-reported in the interview), without the decade-long wait and cost pressure of replacing materials.
The system grew from a single pattern-sheet idea that took a special prize at WIRED Japan's CREATIVE HACK AWARD in 2018, was prototyped over about six months with the fashion brand HATRA, and has since been embedded in A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE's TYPE-IX Synflux project jacket, in Goldwin's SYN-GRID mass-production project — whose The North Face product lines adopt it — and in the Kanadevia staff uniforms exhibited at the Osaka-Kansai Expo's 'Future City' pavilion.
Kawasaki recalls 2026 as the breakout year: a ¥520 million funding round completed in January, his first book 'Fashion for the Planet' published in February, and in May the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen naming Synflux the first Japanese company to win its international Trailblazer Programme grand prize — he notes this landed just as sustainability investment faces political and economic headwinds.
Why it lands
Pattern-making is where fabric waste accumulates most, yet most sustainability effort targets materials, which take a decade to swap in and push costs up.
The system installs inside existing production — no new material, no new machinery — so brands can adopt it without cost pressure.
Kawasaki's route is what he calls 'accompliceship': co-developing inside brands' lines (ISSEY MIYAKE, Goldwin) rather than selling a finished SaaS from outside the system.
What you can take
The biggest waste sits upstream of the cutting table: optimise the pattern rather than only the material, and sustainability stops meaning more expensive clothes.
Since then
In the interview Kawasaki describes moving from student idea to mass production: the Goldwin partnership taught Synflux the responsibilities of sending thousands of garments a year into the world, and he now argues that changing the industry's planetary-scale supply chain requires building 'accomplice relationships' inside the system rather than supplying tools from outside. The WIRED Innovation Awards 2026 interview series frames him as one of the designers carrying that argument into manufacturing.
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