Why sacai Went Where the Wild UGGs Are (EXCLUSIVE)
sacai's new UGG shoes are wild, in more ways than one. For her second collaboration with the famously plush footwear company, Chitose Abe looked to Maurice Sendak’s adventurous children’s tale Where the Wild Things Are for inspiration, channeling a sense of untamed play into towering, buckle-clad boots built to roam.
“When I thought about how to express the sense of ‘wild,’ UGG naturally came to mind,” Abe tells Highsnobiety.
“By combining the functionality of UGG, its lightness and warmth, with sacai’s DNA of gold buckles, coin details, and voluminous silhouettes, we created something new that truly embodies the idea.”
UGG’s signature sheepskin boots are reimagined through sacai’s deconstructed logic delivering a truly plushness.
From a distance, you instantly recognize the collaboration as UGG, marked by the brand’s familiar cues: soft chestnut suede, thick shearling. But look closer and you’ll see the shift.
This is where sacai takes the lead, creating newness from a certified fall classic.
“We wanted to reinterpret sacai footwear silhouettes that don’t exist in the UGG lineup using UGG materials,” Abe explains. “In particular, the loafers are based on sacai’s coin loafer silhouette. It’s a familiar shape, but the materials transform it into something completely new.”
Beyond the loafer, there's a towering thigh-high boot and a hiker style, each pushing UGG’s softness into fresh architectural domain and all available on UGG's website from October 24.
The thigh-highs are designed to be either strapped tight or folded down to reveal their lining, a literal expression of Abe’s transformative design lingo.
The hiker is particularly instructive. “By adding metal buckles to the thigh-high boots, we incorporated an element of hybridization that has become a signature of ours,” Abe says.
sacai lives by a code of contrast. Abe built her reputation on cutting opposites into partners: nylon with knit, tailoring with fleece, elegance with utility. Since founding her brand in Tokyo in 1999, she’s treated design like collage, merging pieces that shouldn’t fit until they do. That same approach extends to sacai's collaborations.
This is where Abe's ideas meet other systems, structure tested against new materials, whether she’s rebuilding Nike runners, reworking Carhartt workwear, or breaking the French connection over at A.P.C.
UGG has similarly grown to embody this kind if quiet evolution. Designers across fashion’s avant-garde have pulled are pulling its signature boots into their worlds.
Martine Rose used UGG’s bulky warmth to exaggerate proportion in her menswear; KNWLS reimagined it through a gritty, London-goth lens; Magliano turned it into something languid and offbeat, more art-school than après-ski; Beyond the runway, artists like Josué Thomas of Gallery Dept. and Reese Cooper have made UGGs their studio shoes of choice, a symbol of creativity over convention.
UGG isn’t just a seasonal staple. It’s luxury-adjacent, sculptural, and confidently weird, the perfect raw material for Abe’s hybrid experiments.
“I choose brands that I would personally want to wear or that spark my interest," says Abe. "There are no rules regarding the selection, ranging from well-known brands to those less familiar. Some grow out of friendships I’ve built over the years. But ultimately, the focus is on creating something that feels new and meaningful on both sides.”
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