Who Made Your Gi

Mike Dytri is the founder of Vanguard Kimono. He is also a third-degree black belt under Chris Haueter, a former MMA fighter, a longtime designer in streetwear and skateboarding, and the design consultant behind Gracie Barra's GB Wear program. We sat down at the Vanguard studio to talk about how a kimono actually gets made, and what that process reveals about the people wearing it. The conversation starts with Carlos Gracie Jr.'s recent red belt and moves into what Mike sees as the real legacy of Gracie Barra: the infrastructure that made it possible for the rest of us to make any kind of livelihood from jiu-jitsu. From there we get into the question that sits underneath every gi design decision, which is whether jiu-jitsu is a team sport that calls for uniformity or an individual art that calls for expression. Mike has lived on both sides of that question. He consults for one of the largest team organizations in the world and runs an independent boutique brand whose first release was a selvege denim gi. We get into the technical history, the shrinking of the silhouette in the early 2010s. The IBJJF rule changes that responded to what Storm was doing with double-layered ripstop and reinforced collars. Why a black gi fits tighter than a white one in the same size. Why your pants wear out faster than your jacket. What separates a jacket cut for judo from a jacket cut for jiu-jitsu, and why the difference shows up in the kinds of grips you can actually get. Mike also talks about his own path through martial arts, which started in judo as a kid in Michigan, moved through wrestling and MMA in the early 2000s, and eventually landed in jiu-jitsu. The episode closes on the upcoming Adidas x Vanguard Jiu-Jitsu launch. Mike has been working with Adidas for over a decade across MMA and combat sports, and he describes the long road to bringing the new line to the U.S. market through a vertically integrated factory in China, beginning with a Vanguard x Adidas collaboration on the Evolution uniform. Recorded at Vanguard Kimonos.