If COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS is house founder Rei Kawakubo's outlet for wearable iconoclasm (and Nike sneaker collaborations), COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT is where the Japanese designer celebrates iconography. Recent CDG SHIRT collections have tapped artists like Invader, Yue Minjun, and KAWS, plus the French polo shirt purveyors at Lacoste, all yielding ample graphic interplay.
For Spring/Summer 2024, COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT is going even big. Nearly every model in the 50+ look collection sported at least one piece of clothing plastered with Andy Warhol artwork. Oh, and there are some typically monochrome collaborative ASICS sneakers underfoot.
It's kinda funny that this latest permutation of COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT is essentially a canvas for seasonwide collaborations.
I'm a fan of CDG SHIRT in general, though its origin is almost entirely distanced from where it's ended up.
The line was imagined as, like the name implies, a series of classic shirts given the COMME des GARÇONS touch. Read: patchwork, mixed stripes, classic meets quirk. That attitude lives on in the COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT FOREVER collection, while CDG SHIRT transitioned into a full ready-to-wear line.
COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT's previous iteration was as an impressively approachable purveyor of European workwear, all made in France and all rooted in historic silhouettes.
As it stands, CDG SHIRT is still rooted in those approachable shapes, now zhooshed up with vivid artwork each season.
SS24's Andy Warhol fixation is compounded by stylized presentations — paintings collaged into an all-over print — or text. Specifically, the garments that focus on Liz Taylor, Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, and Warhol himself occasionally sport accompanying quotes, which makes the end result look sort of like a MoMA gift shop find than a fancy garment presented on a runway but so it goes.
It's all comparatively normal compared to the other COMME des GARÇONS collections. Like, SHIRT isn't doing double-layered derbies and why would it? The craziest thing this CDG sub-label has on offer this season is cargo shorts.
