KAWS On Mao, Death, Monsters and His Nobu Tequila Collab

Artist Brian Donnelly created the label art for a limited-edition 25-year-old QUI Tequila celebrating Nobu’s 30th anniversary. Miguel McSongwe/BFA.com KAWS never planned to spend an early October weekend at Nobu Downtown. On Saturday, the artist Brian Donnelly—more widely known as KAWS—closed out the downstairs dining room with graffiti legend and friend Futura (Lenny McGurr) and his daughter, Tabatha Mcgurr, formerly of 2000s streetwear label, Married to the Mob, which made waves for its KAWS bikini collab back in the early days of Hypebeast. “I said, are you kidding? I’m fucking going to be there tomorrow,” Donnelly recounted, “but my wife went to Connecticut with my daughter and her best friend for a sleepover, so I could go out—as long as they still came tonight.” But the next night, Donnelly was back, holding court in a barroom banquette, dressed in all-black everything like a polished one-of-one edition of himself, to celebrate his collaboration with chef Nobu Matsuhisa on the occasion of the restaurant’s 30th anniversary. It was three decades ago when Robert De Niro won over the Japanese godfather of California cuisine and convinced him to grow his burgeoning Japanese-Peruvian empire from Beverly Hills to Tribeca. Nobu acquired his first piece...