The oni is a specific kind of monster. In Japanese folklore, it is large, powerful, and often depicted with a club — but it is not mindlessly destructive. The oni enforces consequence. It appears when something has gone wrong that must be reckoned with.
ONIVERSE's founder, who has asked to be referred to by his creative name Kuro, studied Japanese literature at NUS before spending three years working in visual merchandising for a luxury brand in Orchard Road. He started ONIVERSE in 2022 as a way to work with imagery he could not get out of his head.
"Everyone borrows from Japan in streetwear," he says. "Koi, cherry blossoms, kanji that is probably wrong. I wanted to go deeper. The oni is misunderstood — it is not evil, it is powerful and it is present. That is what I wanted to make."
The ONIVERSE Blood Moon collection — the brand's third — takes the lunar imagery of Japanese woodblock prints and runs it through a contemporary silhouette language: dropped shoulders, asymmetric hem, tonal embroidery rather than print. The embroidery is done by hand at a workshop in Singapore's Geylang neighbourhood, where Kuro works with two Malay craftspeople who learned the technique from their grandmother.
CCC sourcing note: ONIVERSE garments are sewn in Singapore. Base fabric is a 400GSM French terry. The embroidery adds approximately 3–5 hours of manual work per piece, depending on complexity. This is reflected in the price.
The Blood Moon hoodie, overshirt, and cargo pant are available on CCC. Production is limited to 35 units per SKU. When they are gone, they are gone.