Two icons of Japanese darkness met, and the result sold out almost immediately. The S'YTE × Junji Ito Uzumaki collaboration is one of those rare fashion moments where the source material and the designer's DNA are so perfectly aligned it feels less like a collab and more like a convergence.
Two Worlds, One Obsession with Black
S'YTE — the name itself is "et Y's" spelled backwards, meaning "with Y's" in French — is Yohji Yamamoto's atelier-driven, online-exclusive line. Built around the two pillars Yamamoto has always returned to: cut and silhouette. It operates under an anti-fashion philosophy, genderless by design, uninterested in trends. Everything is Made in Japan. Everything is, predictably, black.
Junji Ito's Uzumaki (1998–1999) is a seinen horror manga serialized in Big Comic Spirits about a coastal Japanese town called Kurouzu-cho that becomes cursed by spirals. Not haunted houses, not monsters — spirals. The obsession infects residents, warping their bodies and minds into grotesque, coiling forms. The protagonist, Kirie Goshima, watches helplessly as everyone around her descends into spiral madness. Ito's linework is meticulously detailed and genuinely disturbing. It's body horror at its most philosophical.
Put these two together and the logic is immediate: Yamamoto has spent decades making clothes that feel like they exist outside of time, outside of comfort, outside of easy categorization. Ito makes images that do the same thing.
What the Collection Actually Looks Like
The full drop spans 25 pieces across outerwear, tops, bottoms, and accessories — all unisex, all in black (with a few silver hardware pieces thrown in). The collection is built around two characters from Uzumaki: Kirie, the protagonist, and Azami, a secondary character, both depicted in Ito's signature ink-heavy illustrative style.
The Statement Outerwear
The heaviest hitters are the outerwear pieces. The Kirie Wearing Yohji Yamamoto Drape Coat ($600) features Kirie's likeness printed directly onto the fabric in full manga panel detail — the kind of image that reads as wearable art, not costume. The Kirie and Azami Printed Reversible Jacket ($725) is the most conceptually dense piece: flip it and you get the other character. Both figures wearing Yohji Yamamoto, within a Yohji Yamamoto piece. It's recursive in the best way.
The Azami Embroidery Bomber Jacket ($545) and the Kirie Embroidery Zipper Blouson ($570) go a different direction — raised embroidery rather than print, giving the characters a tactile, almost sculptural presence on the garment.
The Prints and Graphic Tees
Five graphic tees at $82 each cover different scenes and motifs from the manga: the spiral itself, Kirie's spiral dress moment, the Azami collage, the flower and Kirie portrait, and an Azami Waltz illustration. Entry-level price point, maximum visual impact. The Printed Patch Omnibus Long Shirt ($380) is the most editorial of the tops — a long-format shirt pieced together with multiple prints from across the manga, almost like a curated highlights reel stitched onto cotton.
Bottoms
- The Spiral Printed Culotte Pants ($420) — wide-leg culottes with the spiral motif printed large across the fabric
- Uzumaki Motif Embroidery Hakama Balloon Pants ($450) — hakama-inspired volume with spiral embroidery, the most traditional Japanese silhouette in the collection
- Kirie Printed Wrap Skirt Pants ($570) — a skirt-pant hybrid that reads dramatically different from every angle
Accessories
The accessories round out the collection with real craft. The cameo necklaces — both the Flower and Kirie and the Azami Spiral versions at $95 — are Victorian-style cameos with Ito's characters rendered in silhouette form. The silk ties ($80), scarves ($72), dog tag necklace ($90), dog tag carabiner ($105), and printed tote bag ($63) make the collection accessible without cheapening it.
Why This Collab Makes Sense Beyond the Surface
Fashion has collaborated with manga and anime before — plenty of times, and often badly. The difference here is conceptual coherence. Uzumaki is a story about obsession and transformation, about the way a single idea can consume a person until it reshapes them entirely. That is not a foreign concept to Yamamoto's world. His entire design philosophy is built around the deconstruction and reconstruction of the body through fabric. The spiral is, in a sense, his silhouette philosophy made literal.
S'YTE also chose to lean entirely into Ito's original black-and-white linework rather than colorizing or softening it. The collection treats the manga as fine art — which it is — and the garments as the frame.
