The Comme des Garçons Shirt show is a rarity at Paris Fashion Week in that it remains a refreshingly subdued affair. There is no gaggle of street style photographers lying in wait outside the venue (an unfussy white room at the company’s headquarters at Vendôme) and no madding crowd to squeeze through. There is just a slow file of respectful showgoers, mostly dressed in Comme, who know better than to arrive fashionably late.
Beginning on a drizzly Saturday morning two minutes ahead of schedule at 9:13 a.m. sharp, the show unfolded in multiple parts, starting with loud plaid jackets that had been printed with blocks of white space, and colorful grids that crisscrossed across shirts. We moved onto a softer pale blue, with button-downs that had the fabric on their chests churned and scrunched into flowers, before going through to suits that looked as though they had been rolled through a printer because of how their colors—navy and khaki—had been crushed onto the fabric.
Then came a monochrome phase with white button-downs, black hoodies, and asymmetric vests quilted with squares. As ‘The Missing Boy’ by The Durutti Column played, we arrived at a pastel spread of pinks, including a duo of Fred Perry polo shirts with the words “FREEDOM IS ENERGY” emblazoned on their backs. It concluded with a crowd of tartan-printed T-shirts with blocks of white space.
The show notes simply offered the word tartan as an explanation, as well as crediting Takeo Arai with the hair and makeup and identifying the shoes as a collaboration with Asics Gel-Lyte. What else is there to say? A shirt is a shirt is a shirt. In Rei Kawakubo and her team’s hands, though, it becomes something else—comfortingly consistent, but always with a fresh twist. Sticking to what you know doesn’t mean staying in the same place, and CDG Shirt proves that with panache.
