How Vowels Leveled Up Its Tokyo-Meets-NYC Streetwear in Paris

How does it feel for Yuki Yagi, the 31-year-old creative director of the clothing label Vowels, to bring his New York-based, Japan-made brand to Paris Fashion Week for a second season?

“It feels like—have you ever played Pokémon? You start with the damn Pikachu and then by the end of the game, you got mad Pokémons that are mad strong to beat the whole game,” Yagi told me last week at a showroom in the city’s 10th arrondissement, where Vowels had set up shop for the Paris men’s collections. “It feels like we level up every season. The family’s getting bigger and bigger.” His reason for presenting here is simple: “Paris is the capital of fashion.”

Photo: Andreas Pappamikail / Courtesy of Vowels

In the showroom, we’re surrounded by metal clothing racks that display Vowels’s spring 2026 line—the label’s third collection since launching in May 2024—which features a variety of Japanese selvedge denim, retro shirting, accessible suits, and brightly hued knitwear. Yagi, a veteran of several leading streetwear labels he is not at liberty to name (thanks to NDAs), came of age during the new American sportswear wave that reshaped fashion in the 2010s and early 2020s, when casual, durable, graphic clothing began to constitute much of what is now just considered menswear at large. With Vowels, he’s also incorporating his even earlier experience as a bulk-vintage buyer, a gig he picked up at 15 as a New York City high schooler, which involved traveling to countries such as Pakistan, Germany, and the Netherlands, where clothes donated in North America are often shipped to be resold.

As Yagi shows me around, he points out shirts in custom floral fabrics based on 18th-century Japanese patterns and a thick denim overshirt cut from a 1950s-era reference piece. “I take in what I know the best and work with it,” he explained, a nod to the brand’s philosophy of Shu Ha Ri (守破離), the Japanese martial arts concept of mastering the basics before trying to disrupt them. “Vowels is a core product that can fit into any wardrobe.”

Photo: Andreas Pappamikail / Courtesy of Vowels

Photo: Andreas Pappamikail / Courtesy of Vowels

Not far from where the Vowels flagship store now stands at 76 Bowery, a teenage Yagi—who was born in Tottori, Japan—hung out around Lower Manhattan, thrifting at Beacon’s Closet and observing the habits (and wardrobes) of local skaters and musicians. His interest in style began even further uptown, where his father worked as an executive for the Japanese department store Takashimaya in an office on Fifth Avenue.

“Every day after school at my dad’s office, you’re surrounded by a lot of stuff like [Issey Miyake’s] Bao Bao or when Marc Jacobs took over Louis Vuitton,” he recalled, adding that by the time he reached grade school, “I came across brands like Stüssy and it really gave me a love for fashion.” It also provided a blueprint for the type of brand he would one day spearhead: In January, Yagi described Vowels to Vogue as “a grown-up Stüssy.”