We were there to design Yuki Otake at his New York Fashion Week

The model moves quickly. Faster than expected. Their boots are synced hard with the rattled pulsating bass throughout the warehouse. The leather jacket tugs high, denim cuts and grows on the edges, with a discordant texture: thick wool with smooth nylon, structured coating swallows the soft silhouette below.

Yuki Otake watches from the wings. It was the 26-year-old Tokyo-born designer’s debut in New York Fashion Week show – his brand VI E DIT was selected as a global fashion collective display at the Chelsea factory in Manhattan, second only to Manhattan two years later. It’s not hard to see why: his design is guaranteed, effortlessly cool, without pretending.

“Fashion is always growing,” Otake told me the day before the show, at Ace Hotel Hotel Hotel Coffee in New York. His brand name VI E DIT is a blend of French people Fight (Life) and edit. “Editoring is more than just clothes, it’s about identity, and it’s constantly reshaping and editing to some extent.”

Otake’s path into fashion is not made up by industry links, nor is it shaped by the dreams of Gloss Magazine. This is personal. When he was in high school, his younger brother was diagnosed with cancer, a transformation that forced him to question not only his brother’s possibility, but his own. What can he control? What’s the point? Most importantly, he didn’t want his brother to see his dreams as luxury. For him, designing clothes became a way to create, to open up something tangible, to prove that ambitions can be realized.

He was totally self-taught and became the youngest designer and production manager of Tokyo United, a huge milestone. But he wanted to do more. By the age of 25, he had already launched Vie dit.

His series debuted at Playboy’s NYFW is by far the most personal, which seems surprising given its nickname and rich use of the Playboy rabbit logo. This is actually a homage to Otake’s grandmother and the playboy × Gucci track and field uniform she once wore when she grew up. The rabbit logo is full of velvet fabrics, not just the brand, it is playful, unrestricted, and completely a symbol of her stuff.

Playboy’s collection distorts and redefines the sexy American casualty suits through Otake’s precise architectural lenses, marked by vivid structure and meticulous details. He removed the iconic Playboy logo and reimagined it with Code Lace, the fabric he used since his earliest designs. Code Lace is known for using rope-like threads that are sewn into lace fabrics to create decorative patterns with raised sculptural textures that add depth and size. Rare in men’s clothing, its delicate and structured quality has become a hallmark of Otake’s work.

There is a similar dissonance lesson on each contour – troubled leopard-print denim, layered under a tailored jacket; where the lace shouldn’t be; the collarbone reveals at unexpected angles. “Sensibility is not just about exposure, it’s about imbalance,” Otake told me. “The friction between recklessness and refinedness. That’s where the energy is.”

The performance is over. The room was still filled with residual energy buzzing, that surprising silence, following unexpected things. These models have disappeared, but the bass line hovers somewhere under the skin.

I asked Otake if he felt he had done it. Where are all this. “I’m already thinking about the next step. I’m going to expand in Asia and name myself in New York as soon as possible,” he said. Then, almost an afterthought, “But. It’s fun.”

Because for Yuki Otake, nothing is done. It’s just waiting for the next edit.

The latest collection of Shop VI E DIT here.