Sometimes, a bestselling product comes by accident. And that's what happened to COMME des GARÇONS’ Rei Kawakubo.

The pioneering Japanese designer got into a habit of creating employee-only garments for every seasonal collection her team was working on during the ‘80s. These innocuous bombers, only ever intended for CDG’s members of staff, later became highly sought after by consumers. 

In response to the rising resale price of its old staff jackets, CDG appeased public demand through re-releases.

And now, the simple graphics from those archival pieces are even finding their way onto tees.

Printed with “Été 1986,” CDG's new blocktext tees are a nod to jackets worn by Kawakubo's entourage for 1986's Spring/Summer show. The drop also includes a companion nylon backpack and another, slightly distorted, T-shirt design.

The black or white cotton tops are as straightforward as can be, a bold sans-serif font stamped on the front being the only real ornamentation. In a sense, they can be compared to Supreme's Box Logo tees: inherently simple, focused on a single piece of bold branding, coded with fashion history, and always sought-after.

Plus, at $80 a piece, these tees are also amongst the cheapest collectables in the COMME des GARÇONS’ universe, stemming from the more affordable CDG sublabel. Though no doubt, the limited quantities at which these are sold will eventually make ‘em hard to hunt down. So it's a good job they've recently been restocked at Dover Street Market.

For a brand as renowned for its outlandish, avant-garde aesthetics as COMME des GARÇONS, it's ironic how, of all things, a most trivial of T-shirts'd make such a splash decades on. 

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