custom house: Lad Musician

Our latest Lad Musician arrivals are now available for viewing on BlackbirdBallard.com. Due to restrictions instated by the brand for online sales, we are unable to offer the items for purchase by click-to-buy. If you have any questions or interest in purchase, though, please e-mail or call (1-866-500-2525).

Lad Musician suiting has always been a huge hit with our customers and this time our buy was focused on it. The brand caters almost exclusively to those of a slimmer stature and the cuts are hard to find anywhere else. Truly the perfect option for people who find most American or European cuts to be a bit too big for them.

As we wrote in an introductory post a couple years ago..

Yuichi Kuroda and his brand Lad Musician debuted in 1995 with the collection titled simply "Debut." From that moment, Lad Musician has continued to gain a huge amount of popularity throughout Japan, dressing young men and women with their simple slim designs. Outside of Japan, the brand has always been something of a grail with pieces being very difficult to track down without directly visiting the country yourself. Needless to say, we are very happy to be one of the few stores outside of Japan to stock the brand.

From the beginning Lad Musician has always taken a huge influence from music and especially in the past few years, the influence has shown very strongly. The S/S2005 collection "Innocent" included the first fashion collaboration ever with famous guitar makers Fender while the S/S2006 collection "Metal Box" introduced a collaboration with Bob Marley/Sex Pistols/Public Image Ltd photographer and Basement 5 member Dennis Morris which included photo t-shirts and photo exhibitions. With these rock influences have come also Lad Musician's notorious rock silhouette. The basic Lad Musician fit often includes super slim jackets with a slightly cropped torso and long arms, slim anti-fit jeans worn low on the hips, and a lot of attitude. To tie it all in together, these signature styles have found their way also into their immaculately tailored suit pieces and wovens. The clothes work perfectly as a marriage between fashion and music, keeping the styles simple enough to stay with the wearer for a long time.

A note on the sizing: All across the board the arm holes and shoulders are cut very narrow. In general their 42 would be considered an XXS, 44 an XS, and 46 a S. For the tailored items (suiting and trousers) we feel the size runs slightly on the larger side. For shoes, their 42 is approximately European size 41, 44 a 42, and 46 a 43. When in doubt, feel free to send us an e-mail with any questions.