Creating a “Face” That Carries Both Art and Commerce

Pibesona™︎ Face is an apparel brand by multidisciplinary artist Ryota. It grew out of his art project Pibesona™︎, and features T-shirts and other items centred around his face artworks.

While Pibesona™︎ is built around stories of personas who live by “Play It By Ear”, Pibesona™︎ Face takes the same idea and presents it in a more accessible, tangible form.

To understand Pibesona™︎ Face, we first need to understand the art project it came from.

With Pibesona™︎, Ryota designs items for individual personas who live by “Play It By Ear”, or improvisation. Rather than showing the items themselves, however, each persona’s story is told through writing. The only item that can always be purchased is a novel. The other items cannot be bought by the general public. The only people who can order them are those who have read the novel in which the items appear.

On Instagram, you see interviews with each persona and photographs of their personal belongings, while the actual items are completely blacked out.

The project is deeply personal. For its founder, it became a kind of sanctuary, a place to protect the passion he had poured into his work. At the same time, it was also a reaction against small brands that focus on making clothes go viral by showing off how catchy their designs are.

Now that he has completed the first collection, he can see that this structure was necessary to protect his passion for art.

The concept itself is unique, but it also created a certain distance. It was not always easy to understand, and it became harder for people to encounter this new world through something as simple as a T-shirt.

So, why not make something new?

A French master of art once continued creating even after illness left him bedridden and unable to hold a paintbrush. If he could no longer paint, he would make cut-outs instead.

Inspired by this idea, Ryota created Pibesona™︎ Face as a commercially sustainable brand, allowing him to continue creating regardless of his circumstances.

This time, the focus is quite literally on faces.

The goal is to make the idea easy to understand, while never losing respect for art. That is the foundation of Pibesona™︎ Face.

That is why the Pibesona™︎ logo is hidden within the “faces”, and why the brand’s Instagram features not just product photographs, but artworks created using the products themselves.

In the world of art, “improvisation” refers to performing without a predetermined plan. But this is not a brand exclusively for artists. In modern life, it is becoming almost impossible to live without planning everything in advance.

So what does it mean to “Play It By Ear” in contemporary society?

The answer is simple: a way to easily feel free.

In a life filled with schedules and restrictions, try drawing freely with a pen for just three minutes.

Take a 15-minute walk without deciding where you are going.

Spend two hours choosing a film completely on impulse.

Pibesona™︎ Face exists to encourage those small moments of freedom.

From those experiences, people connect, and the circle grows.

Beyond a commercially sustainable brand, Pibesona™︎ Face hopes to spread a way of thinking that is sustainable for humanity itself:

Play It By Ear.