It's happening again. KAWS & UNIQLO are reuniting for another collaborative UT collection coinciding with tthe release of Phaidon's latest KAWS book. You say what party? We say KAWS x UNIQLO What Party collab. Yes, it's a mouthful and also not pleasant to say but we strive for thoroughness if nothing else.
Slated to land at global stores and UNIQLO's website on September 7, the 2023 KAWS x UNIQLO collaboration is inarguably guaranteed to set stores alight (with commerce) and form mile-long queues of fans desperate to claim T-shirts and sweaters printed with the artist's signature COMPANION and BFF characters.
There's also a collaborative KAWS Phaidon book launching at UNIQLO alongside the collab, but we all know what the folks will be lining up for.
The collaboration was initially teased on August 23 via UNIQLO & KAWS' social media pages.
Two short videos showed KAWS' X-eyed Companion figure pushing its way through a stack of the aforementioned KAWS box and draping a white T-shirt printed with KAWS' 2021 artwork What Party: Tide, an epochal piece showing Companion submerged face-deep in water.
Indeed, everything from KAWS' 2023 UNIQLO team-up delivers UNIQLO UT T-shirts emblazoned with imagery from "What Party," the Brooklyn-based artist's recent traveling museum exhibit.
KAWS simultaneously oversaw "KAWS:HOLIDAY," an ongoing traveling exhibit incapable of being hosted in museums because its entire ouevre was enormous inflatables placed in surprising locations that included, amusingly/concerningly, a UNCESCO heritage site. Of course, there was UNIQLO merch.
"What Party," which toured the world in 2021, was filled with KAWS' typical oeuvre: SpongeBob SquarePants and The Simpsons' animated casts with X'd-out eyes, a DKNY fashion campaign laden with a KAWS doodle, and large sculptures of KAWS' archetypal figures.
Anyways, this "What Party"-centric collab is the first KAWS x UNIQLO release since the pair's 2019 team-ups (and yes, it again includes stickers for first-come, first-served shoppers).
The most famous drop from four years back stirred madness among shoppers desperate to claim T-shirts printed with Sesame Street characters illustrated by KAWS (notable feature: familiar characters with X'd-out eyes).
KAWS' UNIQLO collaborations typically take on pop culture touchstones, as the artist is wont to do. KAWS x UNIQLO's 2017 collab centered on the the artist's spin on the Peanuts comic strip, for instance (notable feature: familiar characters with X'd-out eyes — noticing a pattern?).
Most recently, KAWS participated in UNIQLO's "PEACE FOR ALL" collection, a charitable endeavor wherein UNIQLO parent Fast Retailing donated some proceeds from UNIQLO UT artist T-shirts to UNHCR, Save the Children Japan, and Plan International Inc.
Note that though KAWS x UNIQLO products typically aren't limited (and they tend to be restocked over the course of a few months), they essentially fly off shelves for the first week or so that they're available as devotees dutifully pile into line to consume.
Don't expect KAWS and UNIQLO UT's What Party T-shirts to be any different.
