Guess Jeans drops a VERDY Wasted Youth capsule with skate culture at its core

Guess Jeans has a new capsule with Wasted Youth, the project of Japanese graphic artist VERDY, and it goes on sale in Japan and abroad from Saturday, October 24. It is built from the relationship Nicolai Marciano, who leads Guess Jeans, and VERDY have maintained for years across Los Angeles and Japan.

The two first staged a skater event at Henry's Pizza in Osaka, and in 2025 VERDY became a creative partner for Guess Jeans. Pop-ups at the Tokyo flagship, Guess Jeans Tokyo, deepened the exchange. The capsule now arrives through the lens of Wasted Youth, framed around shared values in skate culture and free self-expression.

The collection holds four styles carrying both brands' signatures. It opens on an archive feel: American denim heritage and Guess' own archival graphics are set against Wasted Youth's punk-and-skate aesthetic. Nothing in the line leans expensive or precious, which is the point of a collaboration born in skate parks.

What the four pieces cost

A striped T-shirt at 10,450 yen is drawn from the house's iconic stripe pattern. Beside it sits a graphic T-shirt at 9,350 yen that combines flowers with the tulip can graphic symbolizing Wasted Youth. Both carry tax included, as do all prices on the line.

Loose-fit washed black denim lands at 22,000 yen and reconstructs the Guess eagle motif into a patch done in Wasted Youth style. A two-pack of boxer briefs at 6,050 yen rounds out the line, its waistband done in the signature fluorescent green that has become Wasted Youth's color.

The capsule reaches four Guess Jeans flagships: Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin and Amsterdam. In Japan it also lands at RAGGAWS and BLACKDOTS, and in South Korea at TUNE. That is a deliberately lean distribution, and it means the Tokyo pop-up will be the closest most Japanese buyers get to the full range.

At Guess Jeans Tokyo a pop-up opens the same day the capsule drops. Alongside the collection it will sell a limited number of denim tote bags that shoppers can have laser-processed with a logo design. A special exhibition runs in the shop's underground space, 81 Below, from October 24 to Sunday, November 1.

VERDY is one of the most visible graphic voices working between streetwear and luxury today, known for bright, hard-edged lettering and recurring mascots that land across Tokyo and Los Angeles. Wasted Youth is his long-running side project, and it gives this capsule a harder, punkier register than a standard Guess collaboration would carry.

Guess itself rests on forty years of American denim built around that eagle emblem and the stripe tee, and Guess Jeans is the house's youth-facing arm. Put the two together and the result reads as a heritage label handing its archive to a skate-world artist, with the product kept deliberately simple and street-focused.

The appointment of VERDY as creative partner last year already pointed this way, and this capsule is the first large piece of clothing to come out of that arrangement. The four styles are modest in count, but the two names reaching four flagships across three continents suggests the partnership is intended to travel.

This is a story we follow closely because denim at this intersection of heritage and skate culture is precisely what our style coverage tracks. Our guide to the best jeans brands for men sits alongside it, and the loose-fit washed black pair here is the piece most likely to be judged against what established denim houses do at a fraction of the price.

We have also written about capsule lines built on a similar anniversary-first logic, including The Attico's 10th-anniversary drop with a temporary Milan store. What differs here is the artist's hand: VERDY is not a collaborator added for a season but a named creative partner whose work can now stretch across the full Guess Jeans line.

Where the pop-up carries the story

The Tokyo activation matters because it gives the capsule a second life beyond the rack.

Guess Jeans has not said whether the capsule will ever reach a wider e-commerce run, and that omission is the awkward part. The brand has kept quiet on restocks or a second drop.

For anyone buying at the Tokyo pop-up, the tote adds a customization the fixed capsule does not offer, and it is the piece most likely to sell through first. The exhibition in 81 Below is the quieter draw, closing a week after the pop-up opens, and it is where the collaboration's visuals will be seen in full.

Details are being routed through the official Instagram of Guess Jeans Japan rather than a dedicated page, so the tote's availability and any pop-up limits will surface there first. October 24 is the single date that matters, and the November 1 close of the exhibition is the only stated endpoint after it.

The capsule is a small, sharp thing: four pieces, one artist, one weekend. What we will watch next is whether VERDY's creative-partner role produces more than a capsule, and whether the Tokyo flagship's underground shows hint at a fuller collaboration to come. The brand has given no date for either.