Rei Kawakubo has said that if she could have invented one garment, it would have been the white shirt. “It’s a fundamental part of a man’s wardrobe,” her husband, translator, and company CEO, Adrian Joffe, said on her behalf. “Shirt, jacket, and pants are the fundamental basis.”
There’s irony in the fact that Comme des Garçons operates a menswear brand called Shirt, dedicated to finding myriad ways to deconstruct a button-down. It’s possible that Rei Kawakubo has really already thought of everything. There’s also a little irony in the fact that while everyone is absorbed in the sweatpants-versus-suiting debate—years into the pandemic, a bored, binary way of thinking—Kawakubo is joyously producing shirts in Tokyo. The button-down is a middling, forgettable garment if ever there was one, and yet in her hands, it’s more compelling than most of what we’ve seen this year. Kawakubo always tends to get the last laugh.
This season, the black and white dimensional variations deserve to be worn to an art fair so that people can mull over a shirt-as-sculpture. And in case there was any doubt of the offering’s overall upbeat, independent spirit… Wait, wait, wait: does this all sound a bit familiar? Like maybe you’ve read it before? OK I’ll admit it: Just as CDG Shirt remixes the button-down each season, I thought I should try the same with our Vogue Runway reviews of the brand, creating my own collage of homage to Kawakubo and her evolving ingenuity. Because to sit at a CDG Shirt show, my first in-person, is to have an experience you have maybe had before: The prompt start time, the white box room, the dozens of CDG-clad guests applauding and nodding with each look. And the looks, they are surely familiar: ruffle edged tail coats and shorts, oversize kid-like coveralls, graphics borrowed from artist-turned-DSM Paris-supported-designer Brett Westfall.
There are, of course new ideas, like Asics sneakers instead of the usual Nike, and oversize coveralls for a playful, egg-like shape. The gingham shirts and crisp ties will take the CDG Shirt customer into normalcy; the ruffled and wrinkled tailcoats and shorts guarantee he feels more special and more strange with each wear. But overall, the effect is one of uncanny cohesion, repetition, and certitude. Newness isn’t everything; CDG shirt makes the case nicely.
