COMME des GARÇONS Made a Shirt So Normal Your Dad Would Wear It
There are so many different strands of COMME des GARÇONS that it’s almost impossible to keep up. In the realm of menswear alone, you have COMME des GARÇONS HOMME, a workwear-leaning line, Comme des Garçons HOMME PLUS, the avant mainline collection, and Homme Deux, a selection of tailoring-adjacent suits and shirts. And that’s before you get to the unisex mass-market PLAY line or the BLACK range of monochrome COMME classics.
However, there is only one COMME des GARÇONS. The mainline womenswear collection started by Rei Kawakubo in 1969 is the forefather of all its subsequent diffusion brands. And as a general rule of thumb, this is where you find the pioneering avant-garde label’s most untamed experiments, which is why COMME des GARÇONS’ new white shirts may seem confusing.
Like, why are these dress shirts so… normal? There’s a simple explanation, however
This trio of tailored COMME des GARÇONS shirts, all made in France, feature different collars and cuff styles, including a pointed spread collar, a rounded club collar, and a tiny rounded cutaway collar accompanied by different types of French cuffs.
It’s all handsome stuff, undoubtedly suave enough for any formal occasion, and the prices — which are between ¥72,600 and ¥75.900, around $465 to $490 — speak to the shirts’ tip-top quality. And though they may seem a very un-COMME des GARÇONS move, they’re actually very much the opposite.
COMME des GARÇONS Shirt is a line that Kawakubo debuted in the late ‘80s as a collection of de- and re-constructed shirts, comparatively “normal” attire compared to its avant mainline. CdG Shirt now produces an entire collection of blue-collar-ish menswear, underscored by graphic shirts often created in collaboration with artists like Invader and KAWS. And, like these new shirts, much of Shirt’s oeuvre is also produced in France.
The difference is that these new shirts are produced for SHOP COMME des GARÇONS, yet another sub-label unknown to all but the most obsessive COMME-heads. This specialty collection, available at certain COMME des GARÇONS stores in Aoyama, Marunouchi, Osaka, Kyoto, and Fukuoka sticks out like a sore thumb against CdG’s archetypal warped dresses and inverted blazers.
But after 56 years of pushing the boundaries of clothing, there’s maybe nothing more subversive for COMME des GARÇONS to do than make “normal” clothes.
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