After asserting it in late December 2023, Italian luxurious vogue home Fendi has dropped its three-way collaboration with Japanese streetwear icon Hiroshi Fujiwara and The Pokémon Firm (TPC). The crossover is dear as hell, however that’s not all that stunning since that is Fendi, a high-end designer with almost a 100-year legacy. The purse, jewellery, accent, and clothes designs are all tremendous cute, centering on the evolutions of the Gen I Dragon-type monster Dratini. These are for the fiercest, richest housewives of the Kanto area.
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You may take a look at the collaboration over on Fendi’s web site, the place a press release reads, “Hiroshi Fujiwara’s FRGMT performs with Dratini, Dragonair, and Dragonite to remodel the Maison’s signatures and icons into mini pop monuments.” So, what’s really on sale as a part of this epic three-way collaboration? Effectively, loads.
Clothes are break up into gendered classes (however let’s keep in mind that anybody can put on something and gender is a social assemble designed to compartmentalize us). For “her,” there’s a $3,980 brown cloth bag with Dragonite on the entrance, a pair of gold-colored metallic earrings with Dratini and a Poké Ball for $520, a $1,250 one hundred pc cotton hoodie with Dragonite emblazoned on it, and extra. For “him,” you get a number of the similar items with a couple of tweaks to design, however there’s additionally a $2,550 brown cloth bag with Fujiwara’s “FRGMT” textual content on the entrance, a $340 purple ribbon bracelet with Dragonite stamped onto a gold coin, and a brown cloth card holder that includes Dragonite that runs $450, amongst different equipment and clothes objects.
You may be questioning why Hiroshi Fujiwara, Fendi, and The Pokémon Firm opted for the Dratini bloodline as a substitute of a monster from a more moderen technology and area. I requested Kotaku workers author and resident Pokémon professional Kenneth Shepard and, for him, the reason being easy. In a Slack DM, Shepard stated Kanto has at all times been the fandom’s favourite as a consequence of nostalgia. Because of this, TPC has just lately leaned closely into propping the area up, that includes it within the FireRed and LeafGreen remakes, making it the idea of video games like Pokémon Go, and dedicating a ton of merch to these OG 151 Pokémon.
Not everybody can recall Scarlet and Violet’s Paldea off the highest of their heads or the monsters that roam the relatively lush area, however most folk born within the ‘90s and ‘00s both keep in mind or have heard of the ‘mons of Kanto. It’s the place the newly minted Pokémon grasp and world champion Ash Ketchum is from, and the newest anime, Pokémon Horizons, is basically set there, too. Kanto is essentially the most recognizable area within the TPC model, so the Fendi line’s focus is sensible.
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This collaboration between anime and costly vogue homes is a long-standing custom. Some speedy examples that come to thoughts are 2016’s crossover between Louis Vuitton and Remaining Fantasy XIII, in addition to 2021’s mash-up with Gucci and the Japanese anime and manga character Doraemon for Chinese language New Yr. On the video games facet, developer FromSoftware collaborated with the luxurious model ARK/8 for some Elden Ring-inspired drip in 2023, whereas the late designer and elegance icon Vivienne Westwood has impressed many anime and gamese in her many years of garment making. I’ve little question we’re going to see much more collabs because the months and years go on.
