I came to motorcycles late. I got my license in April 2018, feeling like I had wasted time, but with one certainty: this was for life. The Kustom, vintage and retro clothes, on the other hand, had been with me since my teenage years. For a long time, I thought they were two separate passions. They were never anything but the same one.
The first ride: proud, and a little terrified
I remember my first ride very well. There was pride, of course: the license in my pocket, the machine beneath me, the engine vibrating through my whole body. But there was also a fear I hadn’t anticipated: finding myself alone with myself on my bike. No passenger, no conversation, no background noise: just me, the road and my thoughts.
That fear never really left me; it changed nature. Today, it’s this face-to-face that makes me love riding. And I think it’s also what drew me closer to custom culture: you find people there who have accepted being alone with a machine, and who have made something personal out of it.
America, or the right to start over
What I love about American Kustom Kulture is its starting point: the garage. Hot rods, choppers, rockabilly, lowbrow art… before it was a style, it was an attitude. You had a machine, little money, an idea in your head, so you cut, you welded, you repainted. Nobody had given you permission, and nobody asked for it.
I only know America through motorcycles, images and stories. But I find that freedom when I ride. My Indian Scout Sixty and my 2010 Road King Classic are not showpieces. They live, they wear, they have flaws, and that’s precisely why I love them. In an age of plastic and clinical perfection, a piece that carries the marks of its history is almost an act of resistance. I wrote an article about it on the Journal, because this idea is close to my heart: we need something “real”.
Japan, or patience pushed to the extreme
Then there’s Japan, which took hold of me from another angle. There, they didn’t copy America: they studied it with an obsession for detail, then remade it better, on their own terms.
My favorite example is the jean. In the 80s and 90s, it was Japanese artisans who saved American selvedge denim, by reviving old looms to recover what the industry had abandoned. I told this story on the blog, and it sums up everything I admire: respect for the craft, for the material, for the long term. Same with the sukajan, those embroidered souvenir jackets with a dragon or a tiger: behind every embroidery, there is a heritage that we sometimes wear without knowing it.
Amekaji, or America seen from Japan
There is a word that sums all this up: amekaji. A contraction of “American casual”, it describes the way the Japanese make the American wardrobe their own: jeans, t-shirts, work jackets, leather jackets, boots. It’s not a copy. It’s a study.
What moves me about amekaji is the gaze. An American wears an old pair of jeans because it’s their everyday life. A Japanese enthusiast asks why those jeans are the way they are: what thread, what dye, what loom, what stitching. He goes back to the source, then remakes it, sometimes with more rigor than the original. It’s exactly the selvedge denim story I told earlier, and it’s what makes this style so respectful: it doesn’t just wear the American heritage, it protects it.
For me, amekaji is where my two passions meet. On one side, the spirit of the garage, resourcefulness, the piece that lives and wears. On the other, Japanese exacting standards, attention to detail, patience. When I put on a leather jacket or a work jacket before hitting the road on my Road King or my Scout, I feel like I’m closing the loop: an American culture, reread by Japan, worn by a Frenchman on an American motorcycle. It may seem like a long detour, but to me it’s perfectly coherent.
I have to be honest, though: I have not yet been to either the United States or Japan. Everything I describe here, I discovered from a distance, through motorcycles, clothes, books, images and encounters like the one with Hiro. I haven’t yet smelled the air of a real American garage, nor pushed open the door of a Japanese denim workshop. But the dream is there, intact: one day, to see with my own eyes where everything I love comes from.
And that’s probably why amekaji gave me the idea for Motor Wheels Clothing. I didn’t want to make yet more “American” clothing, nor a “Japanese” façade, but to stay true to this principle: choose a cut, a material, a model, and do it well, without pretending to be anything other than what I am.
Hiro Takahashi, and my inner kid
And then there are the people. At the Normandy Beach Race 2025, I met Hiro Takahashi, the founder of TT&CO, the Japanese brand famous for its vintage motorcycle helmets inspired by the 60s and 70s.
I was like a kid in a toy store. Wildly excited, and at the same time painfully shy about going to talk to the founder. I knew his world, I had admired him for a long time, and suddenly there he was, a few steps away, amid the noise of engines and the vintage atmosphere of the beach. I hesitated, then I went over.
That moment reminded me why I love this culture so much: behind the brands, there are passionate people, approachable, who share the same emotions we do. And when a Japanese founder you admire takes the time to talk with you, you understand that respect for well-made work isn’t only a matter of technique: it’s also a way of being with others.
What it made me want to do
One day, I noticed that something was missing from European wardrobes: this alliance between the soul of American Kustom Kulture and the exacting standards of Japanese vintage. So I did what garage people do: I built it myself.
Motor Wheels Clothing is me, alone, in a corner of my house in Gironde, between two seas. I search, test and compare blank pieces until I find the right cut and the right material. I draw the designs, press them, and sew the labels by hand. For leather and denim, I design each model myself, then entrust the making to partner workshops that master these materials better than I do. It’s my way of paying tribute to American DIY and Japanese rigor, without pretending to be what I’m not.
Why I never tire of it
At heart, this is what these two cultures have in common, and why I love them: they refuse the disposable. One out of audacity, the other out of exacting standards, but both out of respect for what is made by hand. A garment that develops a patina, a motorcycle you rebuild, a jacket you keep for ten years: it says something about the person who wears it.
The first time I rode off alone on my motorcycle, I was afraid. Facing Hiro Takahashi, I was shy. And yet, it’s precisely in those moments that I felt I was in the right place. You can’t cheat with passion: it’s what moved me forward despite the fear of the first ride and the shyness in front of Hiro, and it’s what I put today into every Motor Wheels Clothing piece.
0 comments