Illustrator Setsu Nagasawa was born on May 12, 1917, in Fukushima Prefecture. He passed away on June 23, 1999. He was a pioneer of Japanese fashion illustrators and the founder of the Setsu Mode Seminar.
After graduating from junior high school, he moved to Tokyo and enrolled in the art department of Bunka Gakuin. While there, he exhibited at the Japan Watercolor Association exhibition and became a member two years later. After graduation, recommended by Junichi Nakahara, he contributed illustrations and essays to magazines such as Soreiyu and Himawari, and won the New Artist Award at the Shinseisakuha exhibition. After the war, he became a huge hit with his illustrations and essays for fashion magazines.
In 1954, he opened the "Setsu Nagasawa Style Art Class" in Koenji, later renaming it the Setsu Mode Seminar. In 1964, he held the "Monosex Show," an experimental endeavor in which participants disregarded gender distinctions in clothing and wore whatever clothes they liked in their own size. His demonstration of men wearing skirts drew much attention.

In 1965, a new school building was completed in Shinjuku. Its avant-garde style and elegant colors, which opposed academicism, are known as the "Setsu school." Famous figures from a variety of fields have studied at the school, including Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Isao Kaneko, Simon Yotsuya, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Moyoco Anno, Tadao Ando, Kirin Kiki, and Keigo Oyamada.

He died on June 23, 1999, at the age of 82, from a cerebral contusion sustained in a bicycle fall. Even today, the drawings, books, and teaching style he published during his lifetime continue to influence many people. Since last year, his atelier in his birthplace in Nishiki-cho, Aizuwakamatsu City, has been open to the public.