Uniqlo launches a capsule tribute to the Japanese Ukiyo-e art

Two Japanese symbols meet in the name of fashion. The retailer Uniqlo chooses to pay homage to the artistic movement Ukiyo-e, famous for printing with wooden matrices, with a new capsule collection of t-shirts, available for men and women for €14.90. What makes each item special are some of the most evocative works by Utagawa Kunimasa, Tōshūsai Sharaku and the famous Big Wave by Katsushika Hokusai. Their art, which flourished between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries around the city of Edo (which later became Tokyo), is an invitation to float, remove the melancholy of reality and pain and get lost in pleasure, beauty. Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and others tell of a world made up of distant landscapes, female faces and kabuki actors, figures from a faraway Japan that still conquer us all today.

The new Uniqlo collection is the result of a partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that began in 2017, will last for 10 years and will include, in addition to 'Ukiyo-e, various artists and movements becoming an part of the retailer's proposals. Among those that will be launched in the coming weeks, are interesting capsules tribute to Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, part of the UT Collection of graphic tees. Who knows if these new items will still be available when Uniqlo opens its store in Milan on September 13...

Here below there are some of the Ukiyo-e works that became prints for Uniqlo's new collection. 

Katsushika Hokusai: Hongan-ji Temple at Asakusa in Edo

Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Tōshūsai Sharaku: Kabuki Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei in the Play The Colored Reins of a Loving Wife

Utagawa Hiroshige: Sudden Shower at Ohashi Bridge

Utagawa Kunimasa: Ichikawa Danjūrō V

Katsushika Hokusai: Woodblock Mount Fuji

Utagawa Hiroshige: No. 15 from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road

Utagawa Hiroshige: Nihonbashi: Daimyô Procession Setting Out v

Utagawa Hiroshige: Suruga-cho (One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)

Utagawa Hiroshige: Whirlpool