thisisneverthat opens third Japan flagship in Shibuya, designed by Wonderwall
A Seoul streetwear label has put its third Japan store in the hands of Katayama Masamichi's Wonderwall — the studio behind Uniqlo's global flagships — a heavier bet on a standalone Shibuya address than most overseas brands are choosing to make right now.
Wonderwall, the design studio led by Katayama Masamichi, has completed the interior for thisisneverthat's third store in Japan — a two-storey flagship in Shibuya that opened on 19 September — according to a release the practice posted to PR TIMES.
The store sits at 10-3 Udagawa-cho, open from noon to 8pm. Its ground-floor entrance corridor runs about 25 metres deep and is lined with a 13.4-metre-wide, three-metre-tall LED screen, while the two floors also hold a DJ booth, a rotating pop-up corner, fitting rooms and the label's regular racks. Furniture design is credited to Sho Ota, sound direction to ZAK.
thisisneverthat was founded in Seoul in 2010. The company describes its collections as rooted in Korean streetwear culture, shaped by 1990s American and Japanese youth style, skateboarding and military and outdoor wear, and built on a stated design principle that a finished piece is meant to land somewhere different from where its concept started.
The choice of collaborator says as much as the store itself. Wonderwall's own release lists Uniqlo's global flagships in New York, Paris and Ginza, Human Made's stores in Shibuya, Kobe, Hong Kong and Bangkok, and the venue design for Louis Vuitton's autumn/winter 2025 men's show among its past retail work. Putting a Seoul-born streetwear label's Shibuya store on that list is a statement about how the brand wants to be read here — not as an imported name filling a concession, but as a design address in its own right, at a moment when many overseas brands still test Japan through pop-ups and shop-in-shops before committing to a standalone flagship.
For a brand only three stores into the market, that is a heavier bet than the format usually carries — one that only pays off if Udagawa-cho, already dense with directly run flagships, keeps delivering footfall to match the investment.