In Bali, a House That Taught a Fashion Executive How to Relax

“I USED TO be very good with stress,” says Gildas Loaëc, the chief executive officer and co-founder of the brand Maison Kitsuné, which has, over 21 years, grown to include more than 75 fashion boutiques and 35 cafes worldwide, after beginning as a record label that worked with indie bands like Phoenix and Cut Copy. Raised in Brittany, Loaëc met his business partner, the French Japanese Masaya Kuroki, 49, while running a Parisian record store, D.J.ing at night and collaborating with the helmeted electronic duo Daft Punk. Now 51, he has long prided himself on knowing what sorts of music, clothes and coffee certain cool-chasing young people from Tokyo to New York want to consume next.

One way he did that was by regularly going out. But during the pandemic, Loaëc says, he was “really feeling stressed,” and it had little to do with the virus. His hearing and eyesight started to go: “You get to a limit, and you decide to be outside the scene.” He watched his friend Virgil Abloh die of cancer at 41 after giving all his waking hours to his career as a fashion designer. Meanwhile, other businesspeople — Loaëc mentions Kanye West and Elon Musk — were boasting about sleeping in their offices, treating their employees badly or, worse, attempting to get involved in politics and change society. “I think it’s all ego: ‘I want more stores, I want bigger stores, I want to fly private’ — or other things that’re terrible for humans,” he says. “But what’s the pleasure in that journey?”

Loaëc realized he was on a different path. Unlike many medium-size homegrown fashion labels, Kitsuné has stayed private, which has allowed its co-founders to take it where they wanted. Increasingly, that’s been to Asia, where the brand’s apparel sells better than anywhere else. The uniform-like pieces, including soft striped button-ups and boxy wool crew necks, are most recognizable for their small, embroidered fox logo. In Japan, the word for the animal is kitsune, a name that Loaëc and Kuroki chose because, according to folklore, foxes have the singular ability to mischievously shape-shift. Loaëc wants the same to be true of his brand — and, perhaps, of his life: Five years ago, he moved to live full time near Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park with his wife, Romy Ishii Loaëc, now 47, a French Japanese former fashion stylist whom he had met in 1998 at a Parisian nightclub, and their two boys, who are now teenagers. “From the outside, Tokyo seems a bit hectic but, compared to Paris, it’s totally stress-free,” he says. “It’s really quiet, and there’s so much green and you don’t have to be ready when you leave your house to get into small talk with anybody.”