YAKU

YAKU is a London-based label founded in 2023 by designer Yaku Stapleton, a graduate of Leeds Beckett and Central Saint Martins. Rooted in Afrofuturism and fantasy world-building, the brand reimagines members of Stapleton’s family as characters in a limitless universe inspired by RPG games and natural history. Each season is a chapter in an unfolding story – The ImPossible Family Reunion in RPG Space – a narrative exploring themes of identity, hope, and time.

YAKU’s shows are known for immersive, story-driven environments, described as “entering an alternate universe” and “a world so spellbinding it felt hard to leave.” Each presentation unfolds as a chapter in an ongoing narrative, with every season marked by a distinct shift in setting.

SS25 and AW25 were set on Tutorial Island — a surreal training ground realised through a sequence of staged worlds, including a library, a forest, scenes of swordplay, and moments of mirrored self-reflection. Across the two seasons, the environment evolved from preparation to departure, culminating in AW25’s Sunset on Tutorial Island, which traced the family’s final day on the island from sunrise to sunset. Performed by actors rather than models, the shows positioned the set as an active site for emotional and physical expression.

For SS26, the sixth chapter, A Ground to Stand On, the narrative moved beyond the island and into the wider world. Venturing into a catwalk format for the first time, the collection told stories of pre-colonial Caribbean resistance, marking a shift from training ground to lived reality. As the settings expanded, so did YAKU’s exploration of fashion as a narrative tool, using space, performance, and fantasy world-building as sites of reflection and connection.

Season on season, these narratives are realised through in-house set design and props, created using hand-dyed, sewn, and distressed deadstock textiles. Audiences are invited to step inside the world through performance, installation, sound, and animation, supported by supplementary visitor experiences such as character profiles, diaries, sketches, and dye tests, alongside digital elements including 3D landscapes, audio logs, and holograms.

This February, for AW26, YAKU presents the seventh chapter, Evolution of Combat, told through the perspective of two brothers. A story of survival, discipline, and physicality, it examines how identities forged under pressure begin to diverge as a result of the conditions that shaped them.