LA designer releases "Shogun Ohtani" Dodgers hat

If you ask young Ethan Krakover if running a fashion studio in downtown Los Angeles would be in his cards, he'd say no way. 

"I studied informatics with a business cognate," he said. 

After college, he analysed data for clothing makers and found a need for western wear, specifically for tall men. However, his employer was not ready to launch, so he did it on his own.

"Most of these are from the Kickstarter," Krakover said. 

Thanks to YouTube videos and a few classes, the now 27-year-old learned to sew. After a successful crowd funding campaign, Krakover sold 150 shirts and began experimenting with his next project. 

"The leftover fabric that we were using was Japanese denim, and at that time, that's when the Dodgers were in the World Series," he said. 

A lifelong LA Dodgers fan inspired by Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, Krakover used leftover denim to make some new clothing, the first of which was a button-down shirt.

"It says Do-Ja-su, which means Dodgers," he said. 

After seeing the fanfare on social media, he decided to create a hate modeled after the kabuto, an ancient Japanese samurai hat worn by Ohtani while he was still with the Los Angeles Angels. 

"It's in movies, video games and samurai were something I always thought were cool," Krakover said. 

From creating the pattern to cutting each piece by hand, Krakover used 18 pieces of American and Japanese denim to craft a warrior-like hat.

So far, he's sold 500 hats with the newest version, the "Shogun Ohtani 2.0," available in two colors. He said that he hopes to see fans wearing the hats during a Dodgers game. However, he wouldn't mind if people kept the hats at home and viewed them as art pieces. 

He said he sought to show respect for the culture and his love for the team through the hat. 

"It's fun. It's a lot of fun to do," he said. "Right now, it's the smallest that it'll ever be. So, it's good, and it feels like it's heading in the right direction."