ICHORA⁺

Because the sewing factory makes the clothes

ICHORA⁺ is made by ZOOM Co., Ltd., a sewing company founded in 1980 by a clothing designer. A factory followed in 1993 in Odate, Akita, a city home to many apparel factories, and from 1996 all production was consolidated there.

For decades, the factory worked mainly as a contract sewer for other brands. But labor and other costs kept rising. Rather than rely on contract work alone, the company decided to plan, make and sell its own brand and keep going as a sewing factory in Japan. The result, in 2012, was ICHORA.

The name comes from the Japanese word itchōra, the one best outfit a person owns. For a brand made in Japan, it felt right to choose a Japanese word that also sounds beautiful.

"In the end, it's the sewing factory that makes the clothes. That's why I want to take responsibility for the clothes I make."

Made for what touches your skin every day

On March 15, 2024, ICHORA added functional materials and became ICHORA⁺. Clothing touches the skin for much of the day, so reducing the small stresses of how a garment feels has real meaning. Not just clothes that look good, but clothes that feel good and make daily life more comfortable: that is the thinking behind ICHORA⁺.

Behind that thinking is what company president Moto Kagamura learned as a pharmacist about how stress affects body and mind. The phrase "from medicine, to clothing, to clothes that care" became the starting point for the brand. In Japanese, it plays on three words all pronounced iryō-jin: a person of medicine, a person of clothing, and a third written with the characters for clothing and care.

These are shirts for the day, and also for unwinding at home or sleeping, the times when it matters most to put less stress on the body. The hope is that people will choose ICHORA⁺ for themselves, today and tomorrow.

A seal on the label, 44 years on

Starting with ICHORA⁺, each quality label has been stamped with the Kagamura seal, the mark of the person responsible for making it. It had been 44 years since the company was founded, and the factory was now making T-shirts under its own brand. The seal is a way of taking responsibility for every single garment as its maker.

What matters most at the Akita factory is honest work without compromise. Underneath that is an attitude: thinking not "for the customer" but "from the customer's position." Instead of deciding by the maker's own convenience or values, the factory keeps asking how the person wearing a shirt will feel and what they are looking for.

"This is the T-shirt I've been looking for"

Having its own brand changed something at the factory. In the contract-sewing years, the staff almost never heard directly from the people who wore what they had made.

Then a customer told ICHORA⁺: "This is the T-shirt I've been looking for." When those words were passed on to the Akita staff, people began to feel that "maybe what we do is actually something remarkable." Skills and work they took for granted had become something special to someone else. Customers' voices helped the craftspeople see the value of their own work again.

Making Japanese-made T-shirts a movement

The white ICHORA⁺ T-shirt is made entirely in Japan, from spinning through knitting, dyeing and sewing. The brand has been certified under Sumida Modern 2025, the regional brand of Sumida City, and in September 2026 it appeared on the ABEMA Prime program to talk about the state of Japan's sewing factories, on the theme "Made in Japan: 1.1%."

The first goal is to be the name people in Japan think of for Japanese-made T-shirts. The larger one is to "make Japanese-made T-shirts a movement," in the belief that the brand's growth can bring more work to Japan's sewing factories and carry its manufacturing into the future. For now, building recognition in Japan comes first, though the company would gladly take on overseas opportunities when they arise.

On December 11 and 12, 2026, ICHORA⁺ plans to take part in the Nihonsei no Kakugo Ten event in Osaka, a chance to feel the shirts in person.