Here's How You Make One of Fashion’s Oldest Fabrics Feel Fresh
Scroll through the social feed of Fake as Flowers (or FAF), and you might think the small Japanese brand doesn’t take itself too seriously. It recently released a candy-colored line of keychains shaped like ancient Egyptian ankhs, and its most recent Fall/Winter 2026 collection, “F Casual,” lives up to the name with roomy, slouchy silhouettes you’d expect from a streetwear label.
But look closer. Or, scratch that. Just look at its latest move: FAF has partnered with Yohji Yamamoto’s Y’s sub-label on a surprising new capsule collection of unisex coats, jackets, bags, and trousers. We say "surprising" because, well, Y’s is ostentsibly a womenswear label (while Y’s For Men creates, yes, menswear menswear). But also because of the textile at the heart of the collab. Each piece is made with kantha, an ancient fabric originating in Indian and Bangladeshi villages from before 1500 BCE, made by hand-stitching layers of recycled cloth together.
It’s a solid move: use one of the world’s oldest forms of embroidery to elevate your clothes, giving each piece a patterned look that yells “Craftsmanship!” The FAF x Y’s range of patchwork pieces takes it a step further by stripping things back. The brand, founded by the street culture collective YouthQuake, usually plays with graphic-heavy designs and vibrant color palettes. Yet here it takes a page from Yohji with an all-black palette that puts all the focus on the kantha of it all.
FAF has been on the kantha train for a minute, as have a handful of other brands. Indian artisanal fashion brand Kartik Research has long tinkered with the textile, including with a set of patchwork quilted jackets created in collaboration with British heritage label Baracuta in 2024, while Texas-based Glass Cypress, founded by two designers with Bangladeshi heritage, incorporated it into the inside of its dark-wash jeans for Fall/Winter 2026 and throughout their collections.
Even Byredo — yes, that Byredo — lined its shockingly great Byproduct capsule of leather jackets with Kantha cotton. It all adds up to one clear throughline: ancient textile traditions, specifically ones rooted in South Asia, as of late.
This tracks. Fashion brands are increasingly shifting their strategies towards producing clothes that look and feel intentional and individual. And with this shift, there’s something inherently appealing about the distinctly un-quiet stitching of kantha, a technique that quite literally wears its layers of handicraft on its sleeve.
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