Lexus and Ambush Turned a Sedan's 25th Birthday Into a Real Fashion Capsule

Lexus and the Tokyo label Ambush are marking 25 years of the IS sedan with The Future Classic Club: a short film, a seven-piece capsule collection and an open call for people to submit their own case for what deserves to outlast a trend. The clothing goes up September 18 at midnight ET on ambushdesign.com, in limited quantities.

The pairing is less random than a car brand doing a streetwear tie-in usually is. Ambush's Yoon Ahn, who co-founded the label with musician Verbal in 2008, has designed jewelry for Dior Men since 2018 and collaborated with Louis Vuitton, Nike and Bulgari — she's the kind of designer luxury houses call when they want a collaboration to read as considered rather than licensed. Lexus put her in a room with the IS itself rather than just its logo.

Lexus

It shows in what she actually pulled from the car. The Leather Fireman Jacket ($2,600) is built off the IS's structured, clean-lined body; a Seat Memory Red Quilted Jacket ($780) references the stitching pattern on the sedan's interior upholstery. The graphic tees ($130–$160) rework the grille lines and headlight curves into crests rather than printing the car on a shirt, and a chrome carabiner ($300, engraved) rounds out the accessories with a cap. Nothing in the range depends on you recognizing it as a car brand's merch to want it.

Lexus

The film, directed by Xavier Tera, is doing the same work the clothes are: making the case for the IS as a design object rather than a spec sheet. It moves between two versions of Tokyo — an early-2000s setting from around the car's 2001 debut, and the city now — following three people Lexus and Ambush are calling the collective's first members: professional drifter Sara Choi, artist and GENERATIONS performer Reo Sano, and OKAMOTO'S drummer Reiji Okamoto.

Lexus

"We looked at the details, materials and character of the car and translated them through the Ambush language," Yoon Ahn said. Lisa McQueen, Lexus's senior manager of marketing, framed the project the same way from the automaker's side: "True originality is never defined by a moment; it has the power to shape what comes next."

Car brands have been doing fashion tie-ins for years, and most of them are giveaways — a branded jacket for buying a trim package, not something anyone would choose to spend real money on next to an actual streetwear release. Pricing this capsule like a genuine Ambush drop, and giving a designer with Yoon Ahn's résumé the car itself to work from instead of a brand guideline PDF, is what separates a fashion collaboration from a marketing premium.