Off-schedule and with satisfyingly little buzz surrounding it, the Comme des Garçons Shirt show—which takes place every season at the brand’s Place Vendôme HQ bright and early at 9 a.m.—is, in many ways, the most meditative part of the week in Paris. Today, for the first time in recent memory, it started late. A mere 13 minutes late (which is early in this game), but some things are sacred! Apparently, the wacky hair was to blame.
Tasked with endlessly reinventing the button-up, each season, you wonder how the Shirt team can possibly make something that looks vaguely new, and each season, as the looks come down the runway you think, “Ah, so that’s how.” This time, you could feel the designers really stretching the boundaries of their brief, interrogating both the shape and depth of the classic form. Some of the shirts and blazers had half-open zippers sewn in sweeping curves across the torso, while others had asymmetrical plackets that, in the way they twisted the posture, half-suggested scoliosis.
The quilted blanket jackets and gilets that came out towards the halfway point were particularly eye-catching. More commercial offerings included shirts decorated with isometric patterns of striped cubes and swirls, and some cheery colored cutouts. A Fred Perry x CDG polo shirt collaboration brought some hot-pink preppiness, while on feet were blue and red Gel-SD Lyte sneakers from the brand’s latest union with Asics.
There was a slug of revolution in the mix too, which came through in a collaborated with Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi. His scrawls of “Hope,” “Love,” and “People Power” were among the slogans that appeared throughout on thin knits and T-shirts, lending the show a softly political flavor that moved in line with the larger Comme stable’s continued call for peace. Herein, of course, lies the secret to this brand’s endless font of inspiration: A simple shirt, in the right hands, can be a vector for anything at all.
