If you go through this site, you’ll see I’m a fan of the artist Kaw’s work. I mainly collect his toy figures and can’t afford any of his paintings or prints.  Back in 2006, he started his brand, “OriginalFake” with Medicom.  They had a retail outlet in Tokyo which sold his figures and their clothing line and accessories.  The clothing line featured his graphics prints.  The pieces were nice but very expensive.  I don’t recall the original prices but I think they were $80 or so for a simple graphic tee at release with reseller prices up to double that.  Due to cost constraints and the lack of availability in Canada, I never purchased a piece but thought they were quite nice.

Fast forward to this summer (following OriginalFake’s closing in 2013), Kaws did a collaboration with Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo (with former Bape founder Nigo at the helm as creative director of Uniqlo UT).  The pieces had similar style prints as the OriginalFake releases, with subtle details like embroidered Kaws’ signature “XX”s on the sleeves at under $20!  Here’s the collection:

Unfortunately they were only available to US residents.  A friend of mine was able to help me pick a few items up.  It was a challenge as items sold out immediately after release (within 5-10minutes online).  Fortunately there were re-releases and we were able to grab a few.  Overall, for the price, these are fantastic!  Here’s some of the items I picked up.