Imagine knowing that the craftsman making the selvedge denim you’re interested in is 75 years old, or that there’s only one craftsperson who still knows how to do the whipstitch you want to use in your next collection.
That may not sound like a solid foundation for a budding business but for Vowels creative director and cofounder Yuki Yagi, it’s all about keeping the skills — and factories — alive.
“I figured that it’d be interesting to make a brand out of Japan, but right now, Japanese production is decreasing annually due to a lack of infrastructure,” he told WWD. “Youths don’t want manufacturing jobs, so I figured that if we can make a brand that could support the ecosystem — factories, mills and so on — it would be good.”
After all, they’re the ones who produce the kind of quality that he knows can last the distance.
Born in Tottori, a city near Okayama in Japan, Yagi grew up in New York City and fell into wholesale vintage trading at 15.
“I’d go to places like Pakistan, Germany, the Netherlands and just buy literally tons of clothing,” he recalled. “Through that, I found an appreciation for clothing.”
Yuki Yagi
Courtesy of Vowels
But despite a father who was a vice president at department store chain Takashimaya and the fashion connections that came with it, it’s gastronomy that attracted Yagi first. After cutting his teeth in New York kitchens, he headed at 18 to Paris, where he worked in a Japanese restaurant.
On a rare night off, a chance encounter led to meeting his mentor, a person he’s not at liberty to name — and from then on, much of Yagi’s experience is shrouded in the mystery of NDAs.
Long story short, the future designer headed to Tokyo to enroll in Bunka Fashion College, where he stayed one semester; moved to Kyoto to deal in vintage clothing again to save up enough money to attend Parsons The New School for two years; and finished with a one-year stint at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Poached by one of the biggest streetwear names in the world — again, no name dropping here — he spent seven years there before meeting his future brand cofounders, luxury industry veteran Charles Bonnel and Ritvik Kulshrestha, a tech entrepreneur.
What they agreed on was Yagi’s slow and steady approach to building a brand. “I think people are really forgetting the weight of fashion or the weight of how much effort it takes to create something,” he said. “Everything has become fast fashion, even at the bigger brands.”
In his opinion, the recent revolving door of creative directors isn’t good for anyone. “From the intern to the director, everyone is going through hell,” he continued. “That’s why I wanted to create an ecosystem where none of that happens.”
Congruent with this idea, he named the brand Vowels.
“It’s a letter that is necessary for any English word and I wanted to make the kind of pieces that could go with any wardrobe,” he said. “To me those are the pinnacles of design because good design gives me good hope for the future. But beyond that, they look good on any gender, any race, any age.”
Style-wise, he has no highfalutin’ aspirations. Instead, it’s all about going on the streets to see what people are actually wearing.
For the first collection in fall 2024, that includes alpaca-blend grandpa cardigans, cashmere chore coats or printed shirts adorned with a tesselated design nodding to kamon, the family seals traditionally used in Japan. In the spring lineup he showed in Paris during men’s fashion week in June, it’s patchworked denim and floral-printed trousers with a vintage flair.
Prices for the brand start around $130 for T-shirts. Denim sits between $250 and $400 and outerwear ranges from $650 to around $1,300, depending on fabrics and finishings.
Staple fabrics such as selvage denim and cottons are par for the course but there’s also more unusual choices, like a beautiful linen fabric made in the Osaka area in the 17th or 18th century that Yagi found in an antique shop in Kyoto.
Looks from the Vowels spring 2025 collection.
Courtesy of Vowels
“This block print was so beautiful, a really abstract screen print, that we replicated it for linings and made a short-sleeved shirt out of it,” he enthused.
And looping back to Yagi’s idea of supporting Japanese textiles, materials are all sourced there, except for a thermo-sensitive fabric that changes color when touched used on a shell jacket that came from a supplier in Italy.
And while menswear is the bedrock of the brand, a budding female clientele is already knocking on Vowels’ door.
His desire for real clothes worn by people who don’t see themselves on high fashion runways is also why he reached for a street-cast lineup for his look books.
Vowels is all about quality but it’s also about in-depth knowledge of the field, which is what the brand highlighes through The Research Library. Behind that self-explanatory name are some 2,000 books and magazines that are the bedrock for Yagi’s own work.
They’re available for consultation at the brand’s New York City outpost on Bowery Street, a space that’s been recently reconfigured to add retail space following the fall 2024 deliveries.
But that doesn’t mean you have to read your way through those tomes to understand what the label is about.
“I just want to make a brand people can wear and respect without having to think of trends or even fashion itself,” said Yagi.