AW26 is the start for 424’s first collaboration with Azuki. Subcultures are no longer linked to specific groups, as trading card games and collecting slowly merges with the mainstream world. Azuki identified this moment to push its universe into a new physical and cultural space.
Azuki has always been more than a game. It is a narrative ecosystem built on characters, symbols and thresholds. To bring this world closer to fashion required a partner, who has years of experience and knows how cultures move. 424 is that partner. The brand has deep roots in youth culture, political undertones and confrontational design language.
Both companies operate in spaces where community is everything. And both understand subcultures best. These cultures need respect. The collaboration resulted in three looks on the 424 AW26 runway, each inspired by Azuki trading card games characters.
“When you build a strong narrative universe, it naturally invites interpretation. 424 took four Azuki TCH characters and expressed them through fashion, extending the Azuki universe onto the Paris runway at a moment when TCG culture is becoming a global creative force.” – Zagabond (Alex XU)
Trading Card Games as Cultural Infrastructure
Trading card games have become one of the most influential cultural formats of the past few decades. What began as a niche combination of illustrations, strategies and collecting has grown into a multi-billion dollar global industry, producing tens of billions of cards and cultivating generations of invested fans.
But the true influence of TCG culture has since expanded beyond gameplay. It has created worlds people can inhabit. Rarity, character alignment, symbols -!: progression are central to how TCGs function. Collecting has become a form of self-expression. Characters become an extension of identity. Cards get a meaning. TCGs offer a blueprint for how modern audiences engage with culture, through ownership. The Azuki x 424 collaboration taps into this mindset.
Red as Threshold and Signal
Colour is never random in the Azuki universe, and red sits at the centre. In Japanese culture, red has long been associated with protection and strength. The colour also appears on torii gates, symbolic thresholds marking the passage from the living world into the space of the spiritual world.
Azuki draws from this tradition. Red operates as a visual language of crossing and transformation. It became the colour of the Azuki logo, anchoring the themes of movement between worlds. On the runway this symbolism turned into something physical. Garments are used as markers of transition.
The Red Bean
One of the most important symbols translated into the collaboration is the red bean, reimagined as a belt buckle. Within the Azuki universe the red bean is meaningful. The red bean is a rare and guarded object, a key that allows passage between both worlds. It enables travel through the Garden’s gates and into the Alley, spaces normally sealed.
Crossing between the realms affects power and destiny tho. Not everyone who passes through returns unchanged. Because of this, the red bean has become one of the most potent objects in Azuki lore, representing risk.
