Hello Kitty’s new clothing brand is too exciting to process (and designed by Yohji Yamamoto!)
Attention, Sanrio fangirls: we have some big Hello Kitty news! It was just announced that the company will be launching a new clothing brand, called Kitty’s — and high fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto will head it. The new sub-brand will have two storefronts: one at the Isetan department store in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and the second at a shopping center in Osaka. According to WWD, “Yamamoto and his team will work on product development, production and branding, while Sanrio will handle character approval, store management and product sales.” It’s definitely an exciting collaboration, and we can’t wait to see it (aka, buy everything).
In case you’re not familiar with his work, Yamamoto is known for a very distinct style of clothing — he utilizes a minimal palette and often plays with volume and silhouette, while still maintaining a certain casual, wearable aesthetic (perhaps easiest to see in his athletic wear line, Y-3). According to The Guardian, Yamamoto was a part of a trio of designers (along with Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo) that revolutionized “pattern-cutting, abandoning figure-hugging forms and introducing a more abstract relationship to the body.” His work is dark, complex, and interesting — if not particularly Hello Kitty-ish. (Let’s just say he’s more Badtz-Maru.)
Needless to say, it is a peculiar but epic collaboration in the making, and we’re curious to see what Yamamoto brings to our favorite Sanrio characters. The initial collection is set to include t-shirts, sweatshirts, polo shirts, and jackets, and follow-up collections will expand to backpacks, pouches (which we hope means pencil cases, because we love a good Hello Kitty pencil case), baseball hats, and phone cases. Prices will range from $72.50 to $329.60 — which is no small price for those of us on a Hello Kitty budget (ahem), but is a steal for anything Yamamoto. The collaboration is guaranteed to be all kinds of weird and wonderful, and we’re stoked.
