You're watching an Architecture Digest video or perhaps a story on Instagram from your favourite celebrity .. and you tend to notice in the background a large human sized KAWS Figures in the background. Why Is Kaws so Popular you may ask? Well celebrities, you-tubers, and any other type of celebrity you consider as a celebrity love to collect Kaws Figures.
In the past two decades, KAWS Figures has quickly cemented its reputation as a must-have collectible. These limited edition of eight-inch toys was originally a niche item in the art world, but as of late have gone mainstream.
The list is extensive of celebrity KAWS collectors, from Pharrell Williams, Drake, Kylie Jenner, DJ Khaled and many more. Like anything worth collecting, Kaws himself has made a name for himself in the fine art world and his figures have attracted many because of their simplicity, quirky reactions and scarcity.
And like many things in life, as trends pick up and certain things look familiar to others, others tend to want to collect them. The immense amount of celebrities collecting Kaws Figures has definitely played a part in their popularity amongst everyone.
Credit: WideWalls
Another big factor that plays into the popularity of Kaws Figures, ultimately attracting celebrities to them is the fact Kaws as an artist has had several collaborations with many major brands. This also fueled the popularity of his famous Companion toys.
He started creating toy figurines for a Japanese brand Bounty Hunter in the late 1990's. Kaws aka Brian Donelly has collaborated with brands such as Supreme, Nike, Uniqlo, Dior and many more. He even created the trophies for the 2013 MTV Music Awards, I'm sure this exposed quite the amount of celebrities to KAWS Figures.
Credit: Kaws
Don't forget the sneakerheads! Anyone who knows a sneakerhead or is perhaps a sneakerhead knows how passionate this select group of collectors are. I mean just look at what Yeezy's did when they came out. Anyways, sneakerheads have somehow found themselves collecting Kaws Figures and seem to be a majority part of the Kaws figurines market.
A collaboration with Jordan for the very limited Kaws x Jordan collab did help with their popularity amongst this crowd. But what really is the tipping point is the amount of sneakerheads that tend to share photos of their shoe collections with Kaws Figures somewhere in the background of the photo. Another popular art toy amongst sneakerheads are Bearbricks.
Kaws Figure on display at the Dior Mens show in Paris 2019 - Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images
Anything that seems to have a resale market when it comes to both art and collectibles tends to add fuel in the sense of both popularity and price. The Kaws Companions resale is intense, theres groups on Facebook, Reddit and other platforms, discussing pricing, purchases, sales and more. An unfortunate fact from this all is the amount of fakes that have flooded the market. The Kaws Figures community is strong to say the least.
