Comme des Garçons have always done things differently. Since Rei Kawakubo founded the label in 1969, the brand has refused to conform to convention. Every part of its world feels raw, instinctive and refreshingly unpredictable.
Their campaigns provoke instead of explain
Comme des Garçons favour curiosity over clarity, inviting questions rather than handing out answers. It's a reminder that true originality isn't found in following trends, but in having the courage to carve out a path of your own. For designers, creatives and founders, that's a harder discipline than it sounds.
When you have a product, the natural instinct is to show it off
Place it in the hands of models, influencers or celebrities, and highlight how good it looks. It's a formula that works, and countless brands follow it successfully. Comme des Garçons have a different one. Instead, they create strange, captivating artworks that pull you in and make you think. On a marketing textbook page, that approach might look illogical. To a Comme des Garçons customer, it makes perfect sense.
Their visual language was never built for mass appeal. It's an unapologetic expression of taste, raw and uninfluenced by whatever else is happening that season. The irony is that this very approach tends to put their products in the hands of those same models, influencers and celebrities anyway, not through paid placement, but through genuine admiration.
A visual system is only as strong as the photography that supports it
Every graphic designer understands that. Comme des Garçons often choose to work with existing imagery rather than commissioning new shoots, a decision that feels both deliberate and quietly radical. Their collaborations with photographer Roe Ethridge are a good example of this. Some have dismissed the method as simple logo-slapping, but it reveals the depth of Rei Kawakubo's understanding of visual culture and taste.
By recontextualising Ethridge's work within fashion, the brand also closes the gap between contemporary art and commercial design. An idea can begin with a single image, or almost anything at all. A photograph can become the seed an entire piece grows from. There's no fixed formula for getting to a final design, but this approach shows how starting with an existing image and building outward can be just as valid, provided the photographer is credited properly for it.
Even the paperwork was designed to mean something
Comme des Garçons' commitment to detail doesn't stop at the campaign. It runs all the way down to the mailers, cards and booklets that most brands would treat as an afterthought. AB-0001 – An Index of Comme des Garçons Direct Mails, published by Arkival Books, gathers forty years of this printed correspondence into one collection, with work from principal art directors Tohji Murata, Tsuguya Inoue and Marc Atlan sitting side by side. On their own, these pieces of paper are easy to overlook. Compiled together, the pattern is unmistakable: striking graphic detail, bold typography and considered photography, applied with the same rigour whether the audience is a stadium or a single customer's mailbox.
Rei Kawakubo has spoken about exactly this kind of connective thread running through the house. As she put it herself:
"At Comme des Garçons, everything is connected by creation: clothing design, graphic design, interior design, business strategy, marketing. All these have their own causes and effects, and to bring them all together as one force, one image, is interesting but very difficult."
AB-0001 is a document of how difficult, and how deliberate, that has been. A reminder that to be a true visionary, no detail is small enough to disregard.
Art has always been prioritised over trends and virality
That's the throughline in everything Comme des Garçons put out, and it's arguably the real source of their success. In a world increasingly driven by metrics and engagement, they stand as a reminder that taste remains the ultimate marker of a brand built to last, the kind that earns a genuine, cult following rather than chasing one.
The gap between what The North Face believed and what they said hadn't opened yet and you can feel that in every page.
Most brands spend significant time, energy and budget trying to get back to something that looks like this and The North Face in 1968 just hadn't left yet.
Shot of the good stuff.
