Introducing BOW WOW - Tokyo, Japan

BOW WOW's own site states the concept plainly: the brand was launched in 2017 "under the concept of Diggin' In The Crates," built around the idea of finding a garment that becomes a genuine "perfect piece" rather than forcing extravagance — something that deepens with wear instead of simply ageing.

The phrase is a direct borrow from hip-hop. "Digging in the crates" describes what a DJ does before a track exists at all: hours spent flipping through bins of used vinyl, most of it forgettable, in search of the one bar or break worth building around. Kenichi Gonmori applies the same method to clothing. He treats workwear, military surplus, 90s hip-hop styling, skate and grunge, decades of American and Japanese subcultural history, as a crate to dig through, then pulls out a specific reference and remixes it into something new, rather than reproducing it wholesale.

Gonmori's own background runs through Ura-Harajuku, literally "back-Harajuku," the backstreet Tokyo scene of the 1990s that grew organically out of small, independent shops rather than any single trend cycle. Supplementary research on the brand connects Gonmori to Lost Hills, a vintage shop he runs in Harajuku, as the place his eye for original garments was formed before BOW WOW existed as a label. It is a sensible throughline: a brand built on digging through reference material is easier to trust when the person running it has spent years doing exactly that with real vintage stock, not just sourcing images.

BOW WOW's range at URAHARA runs Small through XX-Large across sweatshirts, tees, the jacket and both trouser styles. One detail worth knowing before ordering: the smallest size in both the Mechanic Trousers and the P47 HBT Trousers is cut on a women's block rather than a standard men's Small. If you normally wear a men's Small in trousers, it is worth checking the specific measurements rather than assuming a like-for-like fit, since the block and not just the label is different.

Fabric-wise, the range is straightforward: 100% cotton on the Repaired Double V Sweatshirts and the Mechanic Trousers, 100% rayon on the Check Rayon Shirt, an 88/12 cotton-rayon jersey on the long-sleeve tees, and cotton HBT on the P47 jacket and trousers. All pieces are made in Japan.

Because the aging on these garments is engineered, washed, treated and mended to a specific finish before the piece ever reaches a customer, the care approach is closer to caring for a finished vintage piece than a new one. Wash cold, wash inside out, and avoid harsh detergents or high heat drying, which can strip the garment-wash finish faster than ordinary wear would. The visible repair stitching is structural as well as aesthetic, so it should hold under normal use; if a seam does open up further, URAHARA's in-house denim repair and alteration service can take a look.

URAHARA's range already leans heavily on Japanese reproduction craft — Momotaro, TCB, Iron Heart, brands built around getting a specific historical construction exactly right. BOW WOW approaches the same territory of ageing, wear and workwear history from a different angle: hip-hop and Ura-Harajuku rather than pure Americana replica, and a design process that starts with an invented biography rather than a historical archive photo. It is a genuinely different read on the same underlying respect for how clothes are supposed to age.

That distinction matters for how the range should be worn and thought about. A BOW WOW piece isn't a distressed fast-fashion garment where the wear is printed on and wears off. The mending is stitched in properly, the fabric is heavyweight enough to be worn hard, and the finish is designed to keep developing rather than fade back to nothing after a few washes. Bought as a going-in-hard, everyday piece rather than something precious, the cost holds up over years the same way URAHARA's raw denim does. The garment just starts partway along its own story instead of at zero.

The full range is available to see and try on in person at URAHARA, 3 Johnston St, Collingwood.