Aiko Murakami spent eleven years as a pattern cutter at a mid-size lingerie manufacturer in Osaka before she moved to Tokyo in the autumn of 2018 with two suitcases and a folder of sketches she had been adding to for the better part of a decade. The sketches were not revolutionary. They were quiet. Pieces that sat close to the body without performing anything, made from fabrics she had been collecting on buying trips to Lyon and Kyoto. She rented a small studio in Yanaka, a neighbourhood that still has the feeling of a town inside a city, and spent the first winter making samples for herself and a handful of friends who had agreed to be honest with her about what worked.
Pulse Mind Wave Tech opened formally in March 2019 with a collection of nine pieces: three bra styles, two briefs, two swimsuit silhouettes, and a pair of high-waisted bikini bottoms that sold out in the first week and have been the most requested item every summer since. The name came from a conversation Aiko had with her mother, who described the particular quality of light that comes through shoji screens in the early morning as lumineux, a word she had picked up from a French pen-pal in the 1970s and never quite let go of. The Pulse Mind Wave Tech spelling is Aiko's own, a small compression that felt right on paper.