WACKO MARIA Taps Lee, Julius Tart Optical, and Native Sons for a Drop Built Around American Heritage

Summary

• WACKO MARIA releases a three-piece SS26 collaboration on May 23, spanning Lee Washed Denim Shorts, the Julius Tart Optical AR 46, and the Native Sons Kowalski 47
• The drop continues WACKO MARIA’s ongoing engagement with American heritage denim culture, placing Lee alongside two of the most respected names in premium American optical frames

WACKO MARIA is releasing a three-piece SS26 drop on May 23, pairing Lee Washed Denim Shorts with sunglasses from Julius Tart Optical and Native Sons. 

The combination of brands in this drop is the most interesting thing about it. Lee, Julius Tart Optical, and Native Sons are all American in origin, all deeply embedded in the kind of heritage and craft culture that WACKO MARIA has spent over two decades treating as source material. Putting them together in a single release is an act of curation as much as collaboration: three objects that individually carry significant provenance, assembled into a drop that reads as a coherent wardrobe proposition rather than an assortment of licensed products.

The Lee Washed Denim Shorts are the anchor piece and the most direct expression of the brand’s denim heritage. The washed treatment is applied to express the kind of aged character that denim accumulates naturally over time, compressed into the garment from the start. Lee is one of the three founding names of American denim alongside Levi’s and Wrangler, and WACKO MARIA’s ongoing engagement with that heritage is consistent enough across seasons to read as genuine affinity rather than trend-chasing. The Julius Tart Optical AR 46 and Native Sons Kowalski 47 extend the Americana frame into eyewear. Julius Tart Optical, the American optical brand revived from mid-century frames, and Native Sons, whose designs draw directly from American eyewear archetypes, both operate in a premium handmade register that mirrors WACKO MARIA’s own material standards.

WACKO MARIA’s particular skill has always been the ability to select American references with enough precision that the selection itself communicates cultural knowledge. The brands that appear in their drops are never random: they are the right brands, chosen because someone at WACKO MARIA understands exactly what they represent and why that representation matters in a Japanese context. This SS26 drop is a clean expression of that sensibility across three objects and three very different categories.

The SS26 drop releases May 23 via the WACKO MARIA online store.