Overview
FAF (Fake As Flowers) is a Tokyo-based unisex label founded in 2018 by designer Kazuho Arai and director Tsukasa Takabayashi, both members of the creative collective YouthQuake. The project grew out of the pair’s Fake Ass Flowers DJ unit and early DIY T-shirts before taking commercial form through a November 2018 THENEWCOMMUNE capsule and a sequence of temporary retail projects. Operating through Neover inc., FAF developed from an underground music-and-streetwear project into a structured fashion label without severing the network of artists, DJs and independent shops around its beginnings.
The early label used limited drops, remade vintage garments and collaborations to push beyond graphic streetwear. POP UP SHOP 0001 at Pigalle Gallery in Shibuya in October 2019 brought reconstructed MA-1 jackets, remade denim, utility trousers and culturally specific accessories into a more developed clothing system. From Autumn/Winter 2021, FAF adopted a twice-yearly seasonal framework under THENEWCOMMUNE, while the numbered PROTOTYPE bag series and the craft-focused REROW line extended the brand into equipment and labour-intensive textile work. The original Fake Ass Flowers name was formally changed to FAF (Fake As Flowers) on 1 June 2022.
Selection for the Tokyo Fashion Award 2024 opened a sustained international wholesale phase, including four Paris trade-showroom campaigns between January 2024 and June 2025. FAF staged its first show-format runway for Autumn/Winter 2024 at Rakuten Fashion Week TOKYO, then continued its seasonal collections alongside collaborations with refomed, Boiler Room and BEAMS T, KEEN and Y’s. Released in August 2026, Y’s × FAF REROW brought the label’s Kantha-based craft line into a six-style collaboration shaped by Y’s tailoring and deep-black dyeing.
Philosophy
FAF’s central design premise is the contrast between the built intensity of Tokyo and the possibility of nature, spirituality and escape. THENEWCOMMUNE gives that idea a recurring setting: an imagined community outside the pressures of the city. Arai’s references move through military clothing, workwear and Americana, as well as the flower movement and hip-hop culture, but the garments are filtered through the conditions of contemporary Tokyo and the label’s own network of makers and musicians.
Material treatment carries much of the brand’s identity. Denim sourced or developed through Japanese production centres is combined with garment dyeing, hand tie-dyeing, distressing, block printing, embroidery and reconstruction. Vintage and deadstock fabrics become working material, with antique Kantha quilts cut and reassembled across outerwear, trousers and accessories. The resulting clothes favour roomy utility silhouettes, visible surface change and pieces whose character develops through wear.
The label’s internal product structure separates different kinds of experimentation without fragmenting the brand. THENEWCOMMUNE holds the twice-yearly ready-to-wear collections; PROTOTYPE treats bags and carrying equipment as numbered, evolving objects; REROW concentrates the most labour-intensive craft and reconstructed textiles. Collaborations extend the same logic into music, footwear and adjacent fashion practices, allowing FAF to alter material, scale or context while keeping its graphic directness and practical construction intact.
Timeline
Disclaimer
Creative timeline
Button TextY’s and FAF released their first collaboration on 7 August 2026 as a six-style capsule connected to FAF’s REROW craft line. Kantha quilt textiles were worked into outerwear, trousers and bags and treated with deep-black dyeing, bringing FAF’s reconstruction practice into the Y’s product system.
From 2023, FAF developed a recurring collaboration with refomed that paired FAF’s fictional pirate-radio imagery with refomed’s construction-workwear language. Releases included coach jackets, shoulder bags, graphic cloths and later collaborative garments, with a further five-style capsule on sale in November 2024.
With Autumn/Winter 2021, FAF replaced its irregular drop model with a twice-yearly seasonal ready-to-wear system. THENEWCOMMUNE became the main seasonal framework while the PROTOTYPE bag series and the craft-led reconstruction practice that would be known as REROW broadened the product architecture.
FAF collaborated with the archive collective EIGHT DAYS A WEEK at PULP Harajuku from 1–10 November 2019, reconstructing vintage garments from 1990s Ura-Hara labels into one-off pieces. The project made FAF’s relationship to an earlier Tokyo streetwear lineage tangible through the clothes themselves.
FAF staged POP UP SHOP 0001 at Pigalle Gallery in Shibuya on 26–27 October 2019, its first standalone physical retail activation. Reconstructed MA-1 jackets, remade denim and multi-way utility pieces moved the label decisively towards cut-and-sew development and intensive garment remaking.
FAF collaborated with MIYAGIHIDETAKA in September 2019 for a limited Mukta / Sal project using vintage bandanas and East African Kanga cloth. The work advanced the label’s interest in one-off textile reconstruction and introduced a more personal material vocabulary into its early streetwear practice.
FAF divisions and related structures
FAF organises its output through recurring internal lines that separate seasonal clothing, equipment and craft-intensive reconstruction.
Seasonal ready-to-wear
- THENEWCOMMUNE
- Seasonal ready-to-wear framework
- The twice-yearly Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter collection system introduced with the brand’s seasonal transition in 2021, carrying FAF’s recurring ideas of urban pressure, nature and imagined communal escape.
Equipment
- PROTOTYPE
- Numbered bag and carrying-equipment series
- An ongoing sequence of utilitarian bags and modular objects identified by prototype numbers and designed to acquire more character through use, abrasion and adjustment.
Craft and reconstruction
- REROW
- High-priced craft product line
- FAF’s labour-intensive line for reconstructed and artisan-processed pieces, including garments made from vintage textiles, antique Kantha quilts, hand patching and specialist dyeing.
FAF collaborations
Collaborations have connected FAF’s clothing practice to independent Japanese designers, music culture, technical footwear and established fashion houses.
Fashion and streetwear
- MIYAGIHIDETAKA
- 2019 textile and reconstruction collaboration
- A limited project for Mukta / Sal combining vintage bandana construction with East African Kanga cloth, extending FAF’s early interest in one-off remaking and layered cultural references.
- EIGHT DAYS A WEEK
- Ura-Hara archive reconstruction project, 2019
- A PULP Harajuku collaboration that used vintage pieces from 1990s Ura-Hara labels as the basis for one-off FAF reconstructions, placing the young label in direct material conversation with an earlier Tokyo streetwear generation.
- BOBBY YAMAMOTO
- Artist capsule within Spring/Summer 2022
- YouthQuake member Bobby Yamamoto contributed a graphic capsule to the Reclamation collection, extending FAF’s collective network directly into its newly formalised seasonal ready-to-wear system.
- BlackEyePatch
- 2022–2023 two-release collaboration
- The first capsule joined BlackEyePatch graphics to FAF T-shirts and bag construction; a second release in 2023 used reflective tracksuits, hoodies and accessories around a nighttime Tokyo theme.
- refomed
- 2023–2024 workwear collaboration
- A recurring project that paired FAF’s fictional pirate-radio imagery with refomed’s construction-workwear vocabulary across coach jackets, shoulder bags, rags and later collaborative pieces.
- Y’s
- Y’s × FAF REROW, 2026
- A six-style capsule released on 7 August 2026 that brought REROW’s Kantha quilting and deep-black craft treatments into Y’s outerwear, trousers and bags.
Music and culture
- Sound Sports
- Apparel and music project, 2021
- A joint capsule and Kobe pop-up tied FAF to Tokyo’s electronic-music network; Sound Sports producer Island subsequently created the soundtrack for FAF’s Spring/Summer 2022 campaign.
- Boiler Room × BEAMS T
- Three-party capsule, 2024
- A twelve-item project released through BEAMS channels in December 2024 with a launch event at BEAMS T Harajuku, reconnecting FAF’s fashion output with the music culture around its origins.
Footwear
- KEEN
- UNEEK WK collaboration, 2025
- FAF’s first collaboration with KEEN, adapting the UNEEK WK footwear model for a Japanese retail release in June 2025.
