Vowels made its Salone del Mobile debut in 2025 with a focused presentation that brought fashion and furniture into dialogue. Known for its precision-cut denim crafted in Okayama, Japan, the label led by Creative Director Yuki Yagi entered the design scene with a new collaboration alongside Los Angeles-based studio WAKA WAKA, founded by designer Shin Okuda. Together, the two created a chair and stool series that shares the same attention to proportion, texture, and quality that defines vowels’ seasonal collections.
Yagi selected furniture as the label’s first external product venture because it mirrored the brand’s core design values. “Furniture felt like a natural extension of vowels,” he says. “Just as our pieces integrate easily into a wardrobe, Shin’s work fits into living spaces with the same logic.” His approach ties closely to Shu Ha Ri, a Japanese concept that guides the brand, centering mastery through discipline, refinement, and intuition.
A Chair and a Stool, Defined by Form and Material
Okuda designed the custom pieces for vowels using baltic birch plywood and steel connectors. The chair features a rectangular seat paired with an angled backrest, held together by steel bolts. Maple dowels, measuring 1 and 1.5 inches in diameter, link the legs, acting as both structure and visual counterpoint.
The matching stool plays with spatial perception. Its double-paneled sides and top are cut with circular openings, 3 and 4.5 inches wide. These reveal a central plywood cylinder that references the dowels in the chair, creating continuity between the two pieces. Both designs speak to Okuda’s signature use of form and joinery, developed through repetition and functional problem-solving.
Yagi admires the transformation of raw wood into objects of use and structure. “Can you turn a log into a chair? That takes real skill,” he says. “It’s that process, shaping something unformed that fascinates me.”
Mutual Respect Shapes the Collaboration
Yagi and Okuda approached the collaboration with a shared respect for simplicity and clarity. “It’s been interesting to see the reach of materials and textures vowels integrate into their pieces,” says Okuda. He considered clothing’s adaptability when designing the furniture: “I like how easily we can bring clothing into our lives, so that’s how I approached this – something you can live with.”
Okuda’s design language translated naturally into vowels’ world, forming a creative conversation between fashion and spatial design. The collaboration reflects a method-driven relationship, rooted in shared values rather than trend-driven partnerships.
Additional Editions and Printed Research
In addition to the exclusive pieces for vowels, the exhibition includes WAKA WAKA’s standard chair and stool designs finished in International Klein Blue. These sit alongside vowels’ Research Library, a recurring component of the brand’s installations. The curated reading material, flown in from the label’s New York studio, includes rare Japanese architecture magazines, photography monographs, and cultural journals.
The exhibition avoids theatrical staging in favor of quiet details. Speakers by Matéo Garcia, record boxes by Horizon Systems, and a steel table by Monstrum Studio furnish the space. These elements set the tone for a week of listening sessions and discussions among designers, friends of the brand, and collaborators.
Where to Find the Collection
The vowels for WAKA WAKA chair and stool will be available in limited quantities on vowels.net later this spring. Though rooted in Milan, the project stretches beyond a single event. It opens a new chapter for vowels, one that builds on its garment-making background to explore the physicality of design in furniture form.
got to see this ! it was very cute!