Designer Shunsuke Ishikawa's 2026 First-Half Best Buys: Over ¥12 Million in Sneakers, Leather Shoes, Gadgets, Audio, and AI

In the first half of the year, off the top of my head, a total splurge of over ¥12 million — the fashion designer who splurged like crazy presents his 2026 First-Half Best Buy Special. From each category, I've carefully selected the items that were genuinely great to introduce. At the end of the video, I'll present the top three. Please use it as a reference for your own shopping. And let's live a fun splurging life.

Hello everyone, I'm fashion designer Shunsuke Ishikawa. Yes, yes, yes — it's here. This season's here. It's just the first half, but this volume for a first half — I thought I'd bought a fair bit, and when I checked whether I'd bought shoes and such, I'd actually bought quite a lot. Now, everything I buy that arrives in my email, I have it all automatically pushed to Notion via the cloud, building a database, you see. — It's gotten wild. — I tallied that up, and then there were a few things I noticed weren't in there, so adding those, the total comes to about ¥12 million, from January to June — and that's without a car included, you know. — So you narrowed it down from there. — Narrowed it right down, and this is roughly it. So, I'd like to introduce this first-half best buy. Let's do it by category, then.

We'll start with sneakers. First up: Comme des Garçons HOMME × New Balance MADE IN USA 990V6, ¥75,900. The 990V6 is a sneaker I love too. As a New Balance that gained a slightly softer feel, more like others, while keeping the heel stability intact — I think it's a good sneaker. There was a triple black of this too, but even calling it triple black, there was still a "this isn't quite fully black" issue, and as a sneaker that resolved that complaint, I've worn it quite a bit. It's a jet-black sneaker, a very good pair.

And the second pair — I bought this when I went to Shanghai, and I unexpectedly like it a lot. As for that sneaker: adidas × Wales Bonner KARINTHA LO SATIN, ¥36,300. It's the so-called low-profile type — if anything, this is rock-climbing-ish; Prada and the like put out sneakers around this area too. There's shirring at the opening, a women's-design feel, but that's cute too, and I like it, and these three side stripes are woven in — what is that weaving? — and around the heel there's a sort of quilt stitching, a little arrangement added, finishing it as a designer-ish shoe — a low-profile sneaker.

Wales Bonner adidas — I've bought another pair, come to think of it. — You had. — Yeah. This is the adidas Wales Bonner Gazelle Snake, ¥41,800 — adidas WB, I suppose. What I like about this sneaker is this snake pattern — I like the snake pattern — and this brown-ish leather feel gives off a slightly rustic vibe that's cute, easy to pair with denim, and easy to pair with chinos, a slightly Americana-casual thing, bought as a sneaker to add some playfulness at the feet, and I quite like it. I wear it heading out around the neighborhood, that sort of thing. And similarly, here there's a bit of playful stitching too. So this brownish color — a bright-ish brown color I like as well.

Yes, next — shall we go to sandals? Sandal number one: Island Slipper PB202 Atlas Black, ¥28,600. Lots of you have commented that it's gotten expensive. It's a sandal. I've broken it in quite a bit, and the shape of my toes shows clearly now — I walked around a lot. Injuring my feet while wearing these beach sandals — can't be helped, right? Lately I hadn't been wearing beach-sandal, thong-type ones, so gripping with the big toe made this area hurt, and I've worn them while enduring that. That said, the comfort really is excellent. I often get various comments from you, and among them was "my feet slip." "True," I said, and what I remembered is that if you go somewhere powdery, the soles of your feet get covered in powder and you slip — that does happen, I realized. At those times you grip the thong part harder with your foot, so your feet tire more, but even so it's a very easy-to-wear sandal, one of my favorites among the sandals I bought this year.

Sandal number two, shall we? I haven't worn this much yet, but I like the look, and it's the Lemaire Leather Fisherman Slip-on Sandal, about ¥108,165, which I think is the current domestic list price. That's the sandal. And there's a P in it again, maybe. The slightly square toe is very Lemaire, with a women's-ish feel, while of course, size-wise, it's a size a man can wear. So for pairing with slightly heavy, wide pants, this is cute, I think. The sandals I'd worn most until now, for reference — J.M. Weston leather sandals, and Giacometti's gurkha, among others — but compared to those, this gives off a bit more playfulness, more of a fashion feel, and I like it as a sandal.

I'd really like to go straight to shoes now, but since many of you are probably curious about shoes, I'll save those for the second half — doing it in a slightly teasing way, if you'll allow me. Around here, let me first slip in the things that maybe a lot of you aren't that interested in. — That's not so. — I don't think that's so. — So, let's go with the camera and gadget section.

Yes, the camera I bought this year is this one: Rolleiflex 2.8F. The price I paid was ¥329,800. I bought it at Map Camera, as it were. — Used, right? — Of course, since they don't make this camera anymore. It's one of the great masterpieces of medium-format cameras. I'd originally used a Mamiya 7, a medium-format 6×7 camera, and I really wanted a square format — "I want one, I want one" — so I tried buying a Mamiya 6, and the square format is super fun, so I figured I had to go for this, and bought it. Well, Irving Penn and photographers like that used Rollei, so I bought it aiming for that vibe, as it were. Right now there's a slight problem — the first frame somehow catches and doesn't shoot properly, and just there the first and second frames — ah, two photos in one — what's it called? Not a composite — what's the word? What do you call it? Two in one frame — double exposure. — Double exposure. — It ends up double-exposure-like, it catches and does that — a bit of a problem, so I want to consult Map Camera about that. However, I still can't master it. — No, no, no, it's difficult. — I awakened to Leica with rangefinders, and I've shot photos with rangefinders for thirty-odd years, so a twin-lens reflex is hard. I want to make it more a part of me and, maybe about ten years from now, finally get comfortable with it — that's how I want to use this camera, as it were. But I do want to keep shooting with it. I carry it around a lot — when I go abroad, I've also bought quite a few cases for it.

Next, for cameras, a new model came out this year, and that's the DJI Osmo Pocket 4. I bought the combo, ¥99,880. The successor to the explosively best-selling vlog cam — it hasn't changed all that much, but I went ahead and bought it. As for why I bought it and what was convenient — this is me on screen now, yay — the big thing is that it now supports four audio channels, which is huge. What does four audio channels mean? Those who use it directly probably know, but now there's the DJI Mic 3, a super tiny one, and you can connect two of them directly to this, and with four — it'd be nice to connect them all, but that wasn't possible, so you connect two to this, and for instance if Eddie-san's here, the two of us can wear them and film, and besides that, two more channels can record with the mic on the camera body itself. What's good about that is that speech is captured by these mics, while ambient sound can be captured on the body itself, so you can mix those together. And if there's trouble with these two mics, the mic on the body has still captured the audio and all the various sounds, which gives peace of mind, and — because that peace of mind was lacking, I'd had Eddie-san carry the Z200, but maybe the day I can graduate from the Z200 with this will come — or not — that's where we are, as it were. The Z200 is a really heavy camera, so — yes — Eddie-san doesn't really carry it home and train with it, but if he's going to jog, I personally really wish he'd run carrying the Z200. By the time this video airs, maybe the pro version's release date will be set — with another camera added here that can even zoom — such a one might be out, that's the camera.

So it's about these two for cameras this first half — true. — Yeah, I didn't buy that many this time. — Right.

Next we go to gadgets. For gadgets, this is the one for this year — it was released last year, but I bought it this year: the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Before this I'd been using a 13 or so, so a big gap — I figured it'd have evolved dramatically, but nothing had evolved, which was a shock to me. Yes. It's a camera, but why I bought it — the iPhone is the item that most symbolizes a given year, I think. So people who update every year — with the 17, it'd be like 2025 into 2026 — among the items you carry on you, it most symbolizes the year, it feels like, so if I'm buying, I want a color that fits this year — orange. Conscious of the "H brand" (Hermès), maybe — I bought that kind of orange. And to match it, I also bought the Apple Watch Hermès Series 11 too. — You're hiding it. — This is the L. Can I say that? I bought it planning to use them in this combination. And recently I'd been mainly using the Pixel line, but for stability Apple is overwhelmingly better. The MacBook and such have quite a bit of trouble, right? But the iPhone and Apple Watch have far fewer issues, it feels.

Whereas the one with tons of trouble — this one here, attached now — I received this for free earlier this year, Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold; I'll include it in the best buys anyway. For getting work done it's a good phone. And what was attached to it here is this: the Notta Memo, ¥20,400. Basically an AI-linked AI recorder. You speak into it and it does AI transcription, and the data goes into your phone. As for what I do with it now, the AI-transcribed text — for one, I feed it into NotebookLM, and another thing — for meetings, I now put all the meeting minutes into Notion, so the audio data itself goes to the PC — let me say "computer" — to the computer, and once sent to the computer, it's automatically transcribed by Whisper in the cloud, and that goes into Notion, where it generates a summary, and those minutes get consolidated into a single Notion page — I had this built with AI and it's become very convenient. And every Friday, the issues that came up in that week's meetings all get organized and delivered to Slack — I built it as the starting point of that kind of flow. It can also record phone calls, and several major problems arose, all of which I keep as audio call records — that's how I've been using it.

Next, for gadgets, on the phone-related side: clip-type earphones, Huawei's FreeClip 2, ¥27,280. Those who watch the monthly ◯◯◯ probably know, but this year I bought a Bose and a Sony — two clip-type earphones — and completely lost track of where they went, and the third one I bought is this, the Huawei. This has a great reputation and it's the cheapest — the cheapest of those three models, yet well-regarded, and using it, it's really good. The fit is incredibly good, and the tip is rounded, a round shape that goes fairly deep into your ear, and the low end sounds decent, and for calls too — the mic — which was it before, Bose or Sony? — when using one of them on a call, people would say my voice was hard to hear, but with this I don't get told that much. So losing the two — a blessing in disguise, as it were — I feel I stumbled onto good earphones. The one problem is I toss it loose in my bag with keys and such, and the case scratches super easily — the very day I bought it, it was covered in scratches — but it's earphones I like very much.

Yes. I have an overseas base, and I recently moved it — well, the move was last year — I moved, and then the neighbors turned out to be very noisy, the neighbors quite loud, and a lot of noise comes through. I stay at that base too, and I work there, so — the hours I spend there are long, and the noise started to bother me, and I thought, oh right, I should just bring in audio — fight sound with sound. — Right, right, right. — When you're listening to sound, you stop hearing outside noise, right? Like when you're watching TV you don't really notice it, so I figured I'd just bring in sound, and decided to set up audio. At first I thought I'd do a speaker, a Bluetooth speaker, but that's not interesting, so I bought some audio gear. The first thing I bought was a SunAudio SV-2A3 vacuum-tube amplifier, list price about ¥385,000.

I've had several audio phases. The very first was a Japanese-made audio system, in elementary school — fifth or sixth grade — a family thing, my parents bought it, a fairly big one, and back then rental records were at their peak, so I borrowed records like crazy and recorded them all onto cassette tapes — that was my first audio phase. The second was around my mid-twenties, when a senior of mine opened what you'd now call a café, with JBL speakers and a McIntosh amp — a McIntosh transistor 2255 — and I thought, wow, that's cool. There was a 2205, a bit cheaper than the 2255, a 200W one, so I bought that used and paired it with JBL speakers, and back then, CDs — a Denon, Denon, a Denon CD deck I bought — that was my second phase. And the third phase, or rather — as you can see behind me too — Linn, and speakers from a brand like Tannoy, and a hybrid vacuum-tube amp I tried buying — and now the fourth phase. When I thought about where to go, the Japanese audio geek world struck me as super interesting — the people who build their own, the DIY-audio folks — so drawing on that DIY lineage, I bought the SunAudio SV-2A3 vacuum-tube amp.

This is actually the type of tube amp you build yourself as a kit with soldering. I wanted to bring records from Japan, so I figured I'd need to buy a record player, a turntable, and while searching, an Audio-Technica AT-LPA2, an acrylic-built record player, went on sale overseas, and this one runs on anything from 100V to 220V, so even if I clear out over there and bring it back to Japan, I can use it somewhere again, so I figured I'd buy it — in Japan it's about ¥330,000, but I got it for ¥200,000-something, so I bought it, that's how it went. Then for a week or so I had no speakers and was itching for them, so for speakers I went to my home country and placed an order, and I'm now waiting for those ordered speakers, that's the situation. But in the meantime I was itching because I couldn't listen, so I went to a nearby used-audio shop, and there was a cheap speaker from KEF, a British maker (the Reference Series Model 102/2), so I bought it and I'm listening on that now. That speaker sounds good too, so I'm like, this isn't bad either, but interior-wise it wasn't great, so I'm eagerly waiting for the next speaker to arrive soon, as it were. The audio I bought after a long while is quite a best buy, I think. — How many rabbit holes are you falling into? — Rabbit holes everywhere, truly.

Next, from gadgets let's go to computers. For computers, it's a MacBook Air M5 with 32GB of memory and a 2TB SSD, which I went ahead and bought. I forget how much — a bit over ¥300,000. I don't do video editing, so I don't need a Pro, right? Light, portable, able to work anywhere — that stance is best, I think, so I go with the Air. I've gone Air for the last two generations, the one two machines ago was M3 — M2, M3, M3? — it was M3, but the memory was a bit lacking, at 16GB, and it got to where 32GB is really needed, so I replaced it for that, as it were. One reason is various apps — is "app" right? Computer apps too — opening those while running Claude in the background, and having Claude do several jobs at once, which I wanted to do, so I figured I'd replace it timed with getting serious about running Claude, and replaced it. Otherwise it's just photo developing and other clerical work, so it's plenty, I think. And this is light, and I recently settled on a dedicated bag for it too,

so I carry it in that. And the big purpose of replacing this — this too would count as a best buy — is the Claude Max plan. It's $200 a month; I'm paying a bit over ¥30,000. I signed up for that, as it were. I originally subscribed to Claude Pro a little over a year ago, when an acquaintance told me I should use Claude — quite far-sighted, I think — and that person, though a non-engineer, was already coding together with Claude back then and said I absolutely should, that as a business owner it's make-or-break, so I felt I had to, and used Claude, but in the end I could only really do chat. Then Code (Claude Code) came out, and at that point — let's try various things, maybe even we can do it — and gradually we came to use Code. Our way of doing things inevitably burns through tokens, since we consult it about everything and fire off heavy instructions left and right, so you really have to size up the plan or you can't use it well — that's how we operate,

as it were. Now our company has two genius boys, Justin-kun and Jake-kun, and I'm scheming something with them right now — "let's do something interesting" — and we're currently making all kinds of plans, but then it becomes: don't we need to think about a new computer for this? — a topic that might land in the second-half best buy, announced in this year's, as a teaser: lately I've been watching Drikin-san's YouTube here and there, and there's a computer that shows up there called the DGX Spark, one that NVIDIA planned, and we're saying maybe we need to go that far, so it's becoming a "let's buy it" kind of talk now, as it were. So — shall we get to fashion soon? — There's still fashion? —

Yes. First up — I'll go through these quickly. THE ROW Luke Cotton T-shirt, ¥66,000 and up. — Fast, fast. — Next, yes, next: Salvatore Piccolo × CRISTASEYA Handmade Classic Collar Shirt, ¥102,300. CRISTASEYA, as a brand, when they debuted I was paying close attention — they're good at building looks, and I thought they were great. As for shirts, before, I had shirts under the CRISTASEYA name alone, but I figured I ought to check out this Salvatore Piccolo one, so I bought it, and unexpectedly got fond of it and wore it a lot this spring. The make, honestly, is only so-so, truly, but the relaxed ease around the collar felt nice, and Salvatore Piccolo is originally a maker of men's shirts, right? A men's shirt given a women's arrangement, then worn again by a man — that kind of atmosphere comes through, and I like that round-trip quality of the shirt. Yes, I wore it quite a bit. And I like this stripe pattern too,

as it were. And speaking of stripe shirts likewise — Charvet Blue Stripe Regular Collar Shirt, somewhere in the ¥90,000s I think — I'm not too sure of the yen conversion — when I went to Paris I bought one. I went to the Paris store and had the sleeves and length properly altered — not made-to-order, but I had the sleeve and body length altered so I could wear it in my exact size. It's nice to wear under a suit, and in spring, wearing this alone tucked into trousers is very cute, so I bought it. And there's one more I think I can list as a best buy — a totally

pointless best buy, right here — that phrasing is a bit off, a pointless best buy — pointless, but pointless yet a best buy for me — and I think I introduced this before too, the glass ones — honestly I'm probably a bit of a nut about this, maybe, I don't know if that's really true — so — these come two to a set for ¥45,000. They hide away here, so they're completely invisible to others, a world of pure self-indulgence. This is a gentleman's little indulgence, wouldn't you say. Yes, self-

satisfaction best buy, that was. Next, another shirt, the third — my third favorite shirt this spring, and the one I wore the most: the MARKAWARE Stainless Chambray Double Pocket Shirt. This is a next-season product, and for the design patent I said make just one ahead — made one ahead — — the one you're wearing now? — Yes, after the sample I had them make just one ahead, saying I'd wear it to test it, and bought it off them and wear it. Why testing's needed: this is something we did for the first time in about 20 years.

We mix stainless into the weft — a fine, long, thin stainless fiber — wound around a cotton yarn, and by inserting that wrapped yarn as one in every several weft threads, these wrinkles — all of it is shape-memorized by the stainless metal — so when you scrunch it, the wrinkles just stay. This was actually made 20 years ago at the same Hata-san's, and when I contacted them to make it again, the story was there's no stainless fiber now, you can't get it, so we started from hunting for stainless fiber, and it happened that a place we deal with could make it as a special order, so we sourced the stainless fiber and revived the fabric, as it were — for the first time in about twenty years. In the old days there were quite a few stainless-containing garments, but the fibers would snap and prick a little, and after that they gradually disappeared, and while they were out of sight, the stainless fiber itself vanished — that's what had happened — but we revived it

to that extent, and I love it. It's this super Americana-casual item, right? This — it's a normal chambray-shirt shape, an ordinary chambray-shirt shape, like the very old US Navy ones — and just adding wrinkles like this gives it playfulness, so a not-just-ordinary-Americana, playful feel that's interesting as something modern. On top of that, right now there's a big revival of the fashion from around the early 2000s, and against that current, reviving the kinds of things we made back then is interesting, I think. Our best seller was a wire-in shirt and a wire-in denim jacket — those, and the wire-in MA-1 jacket, were how people first came to know our brand, and they sold like crazy. Wire-in. When you do this, revisiting that territory a little again would be fun, I think, which is why I made and bought this one ahead. It's still a bit off — around August, I think —

so please look forward to it. I love it and wore it a ton. And if you scrunch and tie it tight it gets more wrinkled and narrower, and as you wear it the wrinkles gradually come out and it stretches back, but this is super convenient when traveling — it's wrinkly to begin with, so it's fine, right, whether it wrinkles or gets fold-creases — so I like it as a super convenient shirt, as it were. Ideally — wearing it, there's no prickliness at all right now, but ideally you'd want to layer a long-sleeve tee underneath, I feel. My skin's pretty middle-aged-guy, but sensitive, so poking or itching is a no-go for me, but this is totally fine. Continuing with fashion,

let's go. From here, back to suits and setups: MADE IN USA Brooks Brothers three-roll-two-button sack suit. Traditional, MADE IN USA, ¥264,000 for the top and bottom. A so-called sack suit, three-button roll, a super, super basic item, if you will. The absolute royal road of jackets, with a bit of easy, soft feel to it, so it's very easy to wear even casually — a representative of easy-to-wear-casually suits, you could say. And for us — raised on imported-goods supremacy through our youth — no matter how much better Japanese quality is now, we still get drawn in by "MADE IN USA." They've gotten quite rare, MADE IN USA — especially factories that make suits, there's only one company, only one such factory left, so the sewing factory is a good one too, which makes it a piece worth buying,

I'd say. Next, a suit — or rather a setup — since it's Jonathan Anderson's first collection after moving to Dior, I figured I'd buy it: the Dior Single-Breasted Jacket, virgin wool, ¥450,000, and the bottoms were ¥170,000 I think. The pants are skin-tight. Well, what this is — Anderson, who's become the designer of the moment, with an element of homage to Hedi Slimane, the former top designer, so the two big names, plus Dior woven in — so as a fashion lover, I figured it'd be fine to buy one, and bought it. And I bought

this next one with keen focus — also a setup — made from a material I have very strong feelings about: the MARKAWARE Super 200s Wool Satin Guillaume Jacket, plus double-pleated pants. What this is: Super 200s, 13.5 micron, a wool as fine as premium baby cashmere, and my beloved Uruguayan wool at that. We brought that material into Japan, and it took ages in Japan — spinning fine worsted is really hard now — spun to 100-count yarn, and made into a satin. The hand feel is out of this world. Is this even wool? — it feels almost brushed. Well, it's a satin, so it has that sheen, but it's like polyester — the fiber's so fine it's like microfiber, about like polyester, think of it that way. Of course snags are scary, but isn't this sheen and this softness insane? "What is that," you'd say. And this soft feel — we made it fully on display, full-canvas, and built it properly. And it's made at a really good factory, so it's finished as a beautiful jacket, made in a slightly relaxed size,

as it were. This is amazing — it sold out immediately, I'm truly sorry — but it's seriously good. And this luxury-material series — I want to keep finding more raw materials. These materials, in one go, the quantity you can source is very small, so it can take a year of stockpiling. Well, with Australian wool you could get a bit more, I think, but I like South American wool, so I want to use wool made by the people I like in South America, and that's what I use, as it were. Unfortunately these sold out fast, so — coming up soon are our products, which I'll introduce a bit here, and then after that go to the fun shoe corner,

I'm thinking. Yes. Coming in as the first wool of the autumn launch is — like the earlier Super — the same Uruguayan wool, but this one is Polwarth, made at Tott-san's place, a wool. By crossing Polwarth merino — three-quarters merino, one-quarter Lincoln — the yarn gains sheen and firm body, ending up with a mohair-like texture, that's the wool used, spun domestically and woven into a tropical (open-weave worsted). It's a material usually used for spring/summer, but it's just right for Japan's autumn/winter launch, this crisp, dry feel and this beautiful sheen are wonderful — made in a color called dark olive, a slightly grayish olive. The Polwarth Tropical Huge Coat — ¥132,000 for this. A huge coat, enormous and roomy — the bust is about 145 cm, maybe a bit more — based on a pattern that's very popular with us, a coat you can wear like a so-called balmacaan / standing-collar coat. Big and

roomy, a cool coat, released at ¥132,000. And also a jacket — we do a jacket too, called the Square Jacket, a slightly sharp feel, with the hem cut square, like a double. This jacket is ¥88,000. Now an ¥88,000 jacket feels cheap — partly because of how pricey the things I've been introducing are, but —

and we do two kinds of pants too. The Polwarth Anton Trouser — this is cool. With a sharp, deep tuck going down to the knee — the tuck's deep, see, going all the way to about here, that tuck volume flaring out down to the knee, then snapping in sharply from there — a "shakīn" pant. For a designer, this doesn't sound like an explanation — fashion designers basically live by onomatopoeia and "such-and-such-feel," as I think I said before. Next, yes — this is the same Polwarth Tropical, in a Double Pleat — our absolute staple pant. It has a Japanese-style tuck, and this too has the tuck shifted a bit toward the side, which is just so cool — a really great pant,

at ¥44,000. And there's actually one more material — here we go — this one, also South America, but let's cross the Río de la Plata. Cross the Plata from Uruguay — the world's widest river mouth; I crossed by ferry — and once you cross, you enter Argentina, and from there another few hours by plane, a world of nothing but grassland spreads out — that's Patagonia. Organic wool harvested in the Patagonia region, made into a 2/80 gabardine — a gabardine. The so-called 2/80, a finer-count yarn used to make thinner fabrics even for suiting; being a gabardine, it uses more warp threads, a twill structure with more of them, so the twill line stands out. It has good drape, a very beautiful material. But since it's a gabardine, you can wear it casually too,

which is how we made it. This is a sack-coat shape. The Brooks setup that came up first, that was a sack coat too — we called that suit a sack coat as well — an American thing that Brooks and the like originally did. So this too is a three-button roll, a jacket you can wear very casually and comfortably. And in this material, there's also an Italian open collar — a staple too — an Italian open-collar shirt with a beautiful collar, which we also do, and the Double Pleat trouser, which I also introduced with the Polwarth — an absolute staple. This is cool too, right? A slightly classic, starting-lineup piece. Nice, right? — Yeah. — And a flat-front wide cargo — in this material you can push it toward a slightly casual look, so we do cargo pants like this too. So a fun set of clothes has come together,

so I'd be glad if you'd all go take a look before they're gone. This goes on preorder from 9 p.m. on July 2, so — tomorrow — by the time you're watching this video it'll be tomorrow, so by 9 p.m. tomorrow I'd be glad if you're firmly poised in front of your phone or computer,

is what I'm thinking. Shall we go to bags — or "cargo" — next? Bags are on the small side this time. Bag: Bottega Veneta Diago Phone Pouch, ¥253,000. Think of it as basically holding your phone. A ¥50,000-something phone pretty much fills it — once the phone's in, it's at capacity, with maybe a card squeezing in. With this, a wallet won't really fit, so what I bought for cargo / carry items — there are two. One — insisting on the Fukuzawa Yukichi ¥10,000 note being a point of pride — is the Bottega Veneta Intrecciato Money Clip, ¥34,100. The other, going for as small a wallet as possible, is the THE ROW Zip Wallet, I think — a zip wallet, a card case, ¥81,400. Something like this would fit, I think, but with these thick phones it gets a bit hard — this is just barely manageable, about that level,

so for carry items I bought around these. Carrying two, and so on — oh, there we go — this is now my Osmo Pocket 4 carry case; going with two of these — is anyone actually using it this way? — that's what I'm saying now. And when I carry a

slightly bigger bag, as for a wallet, what I bought this time and found really great is this: the FORME Post Wallet — something like "World Black" — ¥33,000. This is a very well-made wallet, really excellent, truly beautifully made. I'd love you to see the beauty of the stitching, and they seem to make it in various materials. This one won't quite fit in there, but when carrying a slightly bigger bag it falls in the compact-wallet category, so it's a very good wallet. I really recommend this — Japanese-made and, I think, great,

as it were. That's about it for leather goods. Yes, let's go to the final category, leather shoes. The leather shoes I bought this first half — I've probably forgotten some, but counting quickly it was about 15 pairs. — Is your way of counting a "first half" different from other people's? — About 15 pairs. From among those I meant to cherry-pick 5, but it became 6. So, yes,

let's go. First up: Alden. This time I bought about 3, and among them, to narrow Alden down to just one — the other two were cordovan, but this suede survived, as it were: Alden N5706 Gore Chukka Boot, ¥177,100. A suede chukka in the color called snuff. Even calling it a chukka, this rustic feel is the coolest thing, I think. And where they'd usually pair a rubber-type sole, Lakota-san did a special order, maybe? — and paired it with a leather sole, which is incredibly cool. It gives off something close to an engineer- or western-type boot, yet the coolness of it being short — a very, very nice shoe, and I really wear it here and there. As the best shoe for pairing with denim, it gives your feet great atmosphere, as it were. Next: Giacometti FG173 ANILOU NERO

Clipper Ox, ¥107,800. I'd bought 2 Giacomettis — this and one more, an eel-leather square-toe slip-on, a very extreme one — and for the very basic feel I bought the Clipper Ox. I have a few Clipper Ox, but I wanted to wear a slightly different one, so I bought it, and it's great, so great. It's on a last called the Massimo last, apparently, and this last is a bit inside-straight, and this last is incredibly good. I mean, it's super American through and through, right? Seen from the side, the Clipper Ox feels very Ametora (American trad), but when you wear it it's totally different, incredibly stylish. People complimented me too — "what are those stylish shoes?" — that's how much a slightly different atmosphere pulls your feet together. So pairing this with a casual outfit — just pairing this with, say, ordinary Americana-casual, just pairing this makes it a slightly different Americana, you know. So with a shirt like this — a slightly playful shirt whose base is super trad but with playfulness added — pairing something like this at the feet is really nice, I think. If there were another color I'd want it, and if there were a suede version I'd want the suede version too.

And the leather shoe I bought this year that I mustn't forget is this one, I think. The last is heavy — not the last, the insole is heavy: John Lobb Lopez 75, ¥441,100. So it's over ¥400,000, which — I had no idea in euro terms and bought it on old instincts, and calculating later it was ¥400,000 — but I have zero regrets, that kind of shoe. What's good about it: for the 75th anniversary, it's constructed from all the parts in a single piece — sort of spiral-shaped, and when you open it it's all connected as one piece — that's how they made the Lopez. This stitching running up to here is a bit reminiscent of deck-shoe-type shoes, with that kind of casualness, so — if anything I wasn't fond of the Lopez as a shoe, but this looks casual, so I figured I could wear it, and bought it. Wearing it, it really is good — John Lobb, as expected. The John Lobb last is very good too, and the leather texture is superb, so it's incredibly good. No regrets about it being over ¥400,000, however — buying it in France and not doing the tax-free, not getting the tax refund, that I deeply regret, that kind of shoe.

Yes. Next, a shoe I mustn't forget arrived this year, and that's the Rolis Rosenmüller Gilles Gelände, ¥168,100. If you pay the deposit up front and preorder, it takes half a year to now eight months, but it arrived early for me, that kind of shoe. Very many viewers said "I bought it too," or "thank you for introducing it," or "you introduced something outrageous" — I've gotten a lot of grateful comments, truly. I happened upon this shoe through a Google ad, an ad within Google News, and at first I thought it was sketchy, but when I bought it it was incredibly good, that kind of shoe. This is my second pair — the first was calf, but this one is buffalo leather, a leather with fairly strong pebble grain, yet the casualness of that grain isn't felt that much, so it's a shoe you can pair quite cleanly.

This is what's called a Bernstein finish — amber, or, what was it? — some kind of insect, lac, no — some insect's secretion, the kind you varnish violins with, and I paint it on my bike handlebars, and tennis-racket grips too — coating it with that kind of varnish gives it sheen and boosts water resistance, a wonderful finish, and the sole is attached with a great many wooden pegs, a distinctive method of attachment, but truly a good shoe. That you can buy it now for ¥168,100 is a miracle, I think, and you should all buy it while they're taking orders, I think, that kind of shoe.

Here, all at once, I'll introduce the last two together, let's go designer. Yes. First pair: THE ROW Nobilis Leather Shoe Boot, ¥313,500. The opinion "then just buy John Lobb" is utterly reasonable, but for this one, the leather quality really is a step below other leather-shoe brands, but still, this design is the best, truly. It feels like a boot, but made low-cut, and the opening is super narrow so there's some difficulty putting it on, but it's cute. The clothes it goes with are pretty broad — you can pair wide pants, denim works too — and I like it enough that if there were another pair I'd want another, that kind of shoe. This skill with nuance is THE ROW as expected — if only they'd think a bit more about the price, it'd be amazing,

and as for the other pair, Dior — is this "Archie"? — a boat shoe, ¥165,100, which I bought as Jonathan Anderson's first collection. And Anderson, having moved from Loewe, released this wide-width type he'd also done at Loewe as a boat shoe, as it were. This too, like the Lopez earlier, has moc-stitching that they apparently call couture stitching, moc-stitched from that side, so — is this hand-done?

And why I introduced these two together — the designer's probably the same. There's a designer named Nina Christen, and she designed Jonathan Anderson's shoes since the Loewe days, and went along with him to Dior and designs shoes at Dior, and this is probably one of hers too. And she designs THE ROW's shoe designs as well. Which means I must like Nina Christen's shoes. I believe she's started a women's brand, so please do tons of menswear — make them at a good factory with good leather and I'll buy them like crazy. That's the stance.

So that's about all the best buys I've introduced. What an outrageous volume — and this is just the first half. Makes me worry about the full year. The full year is this plus the second half, you know. — Right. — Ishikawa-san, there's no summary as such, but as I said at the very start, let's do the top three from what came up today. — The top three — my mind's already made up. — Already decided? — Decided, decided. — That's fast. — It is. Let's go snappily, then.

Yes. Shunsuke Ishikawa's — Shunsuke Ishikawa's ◯◯◯ — what was this channel's title again? — Shunsuke Ishikawa's ◯◯◯. — I've talked so much I've lost track. — Shunsuke Ishikawa's ◯◯◯, 2026 first-half best buy — number three is? Is a drum roll playing now? A bit contrived, but — which shall it be — the Claude Max plan. Ooh.

This one genuinely changed our work. We're the generation that lived through the arrival of the internet and mobile phones in real time, right? But this time the impact is far bigger. Bigger than the internet, I really think — the impact — so you've just got to get on board, and we use it hard. Research changed too — research for work. For example, when we need to look into textile-material topics, if I say "look up the papers," it'll look up overseas papers and everything, so that research ability — this is within what chat alone can do, but going from there to using it for work, and then using Code — a whole new world opened up. Honestly it'd be fine as number one for this first half.

Next, number two — it's this, this, amazing, right? The shirt I liked and wore most — well, I wear those others here and there too, but of course this is super good, I wear it constantly, truly. Especially — I did a spot-removal, so there were times I had to wear long sleeves, and I wore this the whole time, so I truly love it — the shirt made for the first time in 20 years. 20 years ago I made it much slimmer, and with a very long body length, and that was cool too, but making it at about this size is fun. You can bend the collar and play, and change how you wear it in all sorts of ways, wear it wide open, or closed, or scrunched tight to wear it narrower — it's super fun, so please wait just a bit, everyone. This isn't a plug, I mean it — it's a genuinely fun shirt.

So, let's go — the glorious Shunsuke Ishikawa's ◯◯◯ 2026 first-half best buy, number one is — ta-da — what was it? — the Giacometti FG173 ANILOU NERO Clipper Ox, ¥107,800 — this might actually be the one I like most among the shoes. — Really? — Yeah. Among leather shoes, I'd truly get in the mood to wear the Clipper Ox. But my one concern was that it gets a bit too American-smelling, and this resolves that concern beautifully. If there were 3 colors I'd absolutely buy all 3 — really — the burgundy too, the brown too, and if there were a suede I'd totally buy it. — That's number one? — This is number one. Until now this best-buy segment had a reputation for never picking anything decent as number one, but this — look, at ¥107,800 it's quite cheap, and for the price of one of those you could buy three of these, so considering that you could buy three more, right? — People who buy both. — It's leather, and a cordovan version of this might be cool too. So this was number one.

By the way, I should say, this one — consider it in the legend tier. I wear this a ton too — it's an incredibly good shoe, truly, this is great, but this is a shoe I've introduced to death already, so consider it the legend tier, a separate category, please — so with the Lopez waiting in the wings, that's about where it landed. So this is it — this kind of thing is so good, interesting, I love it, comfortable too, and properly thought out, narrowing the foot snugly, so it ends up easy for Japanese feet to wear. A good shoe.

And so, yes, we've done the first-half best buy — tiring, wasn't it. Tiring. Will you keep shopping hard in the second half too? — I suppose so. — Or else... — no, no, no, no — Anthropic... — Were there things you wanted to buy but couldn't? — There's a Rolex I forgot to buy, there is — a Rolex I forgot to buy — and haven't stockpiled. — You haven't stockpiled? — Things I wanted to buy but couldn't — records, ones I wanted to buy new if possible — a little while back this artist had put out vinyl, several of them, and they seemed to still be in stock, so ordering from Disk Union and such, I'd get back "sold out, the maker's sold out," so about 3 I couldn't buy, maybe. Yeah. I'd wanted them new if possible. Records suddenly entering this lineup would be interesting — I'd like to add that sort of genre and such too. Depending on the moment.

Everyone, happy shopping. Can I talk a bit more now? These days everyone says subscription, sharing, right? But that's not fun, is it. Maybe it's because of our generation, but owning things and living together with them is what I find fun. Something borrowed always feels like someone else's no matter how long, a feeling you can't shake, and you won't cherish it as much, and can't pour affection into it, it feels. A rental kitty or a rental doggy — you probably couldn't devote that much affection, right? So — I truly love animals, but I try to pour as much affection into things as into animals, or so I intend — and yet there's so much I lose track of where it all is, far too much, right.

Everyone, please subscribe, like, comment, and the bell and Hype — thank you. First of all, nothing starts without subscribing, so please. 100,000 subscribers, please!