Thom Browne and ASICS mark their collaboration with a photographic art magazine

When luxury labels collaborate with performance footwear brands, the standard playbook runs something like this: a capsule product, a campaign shoot, a press release. Thom Browne and ASICS are doing something different. Their latest move — a limited-edition print publication called “The Working Hour” — frames their ongoing collaboration as an exercise in cultural storytelling.

A sprint in a suit: the magazine that turns collaboration into story

Released in early April 2026 and available exclusively at Thom Browne flagship stores worldwide in strictly limited quantities, “The Working Hour” centres on a single, dissonant image: a figure sprinting through Tokyo in a perfectly fitted office suit. Photographer and creative director Robbie Lawrence spent a day following that figure through the city, producing a visual essay that sustains a tension between tailoring and speed, composure and breathlessness, what belongs and what, by any rational standard, does not.

“We remember the suit because a suit is sometimes the first thing to seem out of place,” the publication states — a line that neatly captures the project’s central logic. Layout design was handled by Kontact Studio, with text contributed by essayist Durga Chew-Bose. The publication also includes a conversation between Browne and Lawrence about the creative process — an editorial decision that shifts “The Working Hour” from promotional artefact towards something closer to a design document in its own right.

Running as philosophy: Browne, Lawrence… and Murakami

Browne is also, by his own account, a committed runner — and he speaks of it the way writers speak of their desk: as a necessary ritual, not a supplement to the real work. The New York-based American designer, whose label has spent more than two decades redefining the boundaries of tailoring through shrunken proportions and uniform-inspired precision, describes his time on foot as “wonderfully devotional and alone”, a state in which his mind goes “free and open” and collections begin to take shape.

The logic, as he frames it, is the same one that governs his design practice: focus on “one thing, really well”.

It is a sensibility that photographer Robbie Lawrence recognized immediately. Lawrence, whose crepuscular images move between portraiture and landscape with sustained attention to light, shadow and the relationship between person and place, approaches his own practice through a similar discipline — returning to the same formal questions and allowing previous work to surface in new compositions. It is what made him the right eye for this project.

It is also hard not to think of Haruki Murakami here. The Japanese novelist has written about running with the same quality of devotion — not as fitness, and not as discipline in any punishing sense, but as a daily clearing. He has described the experience as a kind of purposeful emptying:

“I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.” he writes in his memoir on the subject.

What Murakami, Browne and Lawrence share is the conviction that serious, solitary repetition — of miles, of stitches, of exposures — is not the path to something else. It is already the thing itself.

A shared philosophy grounds the collaboration

The partnership between Browne and ASICS draws on a specific alignment of convictions. According to the project’s documentation, Browne has long admired ASICS’ design approach — specifically the conviction that a product should communicate its own value without marketing elaboration. That principle sits directly alongside Browne’s own practice, which for more than two decades has centered on precise repetition of a core tailored silhouette rather than seasonal reinvention for its own sake.

The footwear at the center of the collaboration is ASICS’ GEL-KAYANO 14, a classic performance silhouette reinterpreted through Browne’s tailoring language. Design details include an optional Catch-Lace system in red, white and blue grosgrain — a reference to Browne’s signature garment detailing and to his background as a competitive swimmer and long-distance runner during his university years.

“The Working Hour” is available in print exclusively at Thom Browne flagship stores globally: you can preview it here. The GEL-KAYANO 14 collaboration is available through the Thom Browne website and select retail channels.