We partnered with vowels, a made-in-Japan streetwear brand, to help shape its identity and bring its presence to life in downtown NYC.

Vowels’ creative director, Yuki Yagi, brought deep expertise in men’s streetwear (Stüssy, Supreme, Awake NY, etc.) and a strong artistic foundation shaped by his roots in both Japan and New York.

As the brand was taking shape, Combo’s strategy team worked closely with Yuki to articulate vowels’ philosophy—a clear narrative rooted in archiving and cultural preservation, and a shift away from hype-driven appeal toward an emphasis on heritage and quality.

Our design team then supported Yuki in translating this ethos into the brand’s visual language, resulting in a contemporary system that seamlessly houses historical design references while feeling distinctly current.

Together, we explored how that philosophy could extend beyond language and design into something physical—an experience people could engage with directly. The result was a research library at the heart of vowels’ first flagship store, housing hundreds of vintage streetwear books, magazines, objects and artifacts, many from Yuki’s personal collection. Open to the public by appointment, the library invites visitors to browse, study, and explore streetwear’s cultural lineage, turning its past into an open resource for its future.

The library and the store function as a single environment—part retail, part research space for the community—where garments and archives share space and context. History and experimentation coexist, each informing the other.

Like all great partnerships, this one evolved beyond the project itself. Vowels brought their retail vision to life within our own ground-floor space at 76 Bowery, a space we created to incubate emerging brands. The result is more than proximity—it’s a shared vision made tangible, built into the very fabric of the building.

Photography by Scott Haven, Dean Kaufman, Iizuka Kohei, Nigel Shafran
Architecture / Spatial Design by ANY