Comme des Garçons revives its cult Six magazine with installations and 12 tees

Comme des Garçons has revived Six, the cult magazine Rei Kawakubo first published in 1988. The new issue is the first in 35 years. The original run ended in 1991 after just eight editions, and the return is timed to Frieze, with installations in London, Paris and Tokyo.

The revival takes three forms at once: a print mailer, built installations in three cities, and a limited collection of 12 tees. The brand is running all three together rather than one after another, and the print edition is the most restricted of them.

Kawakubo curated the new issue herself. It brings together six archival covers and various pages, paired with works from today's image-makers chosen to embody the spirit of Six. Only a few pages of the original magazine ever featured Comme des Garçons clothing.

“High fashion has to have a mystery about it,” Kawakubo once said. “This is the next step: visual representation of the collection, purely for image.” The magazine was conceived as a conceptual look book for the brand, not a catalogue of products.

Salvador Dalí, Robert Frank, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Peter Lindbergh, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto were among the contributors. The biannual offered a post-clothing vision of fashion that pushed into design, film, architecture, art and photography, well beyond the industry that produced it.

Adrian Joffe, president of Comme des Garçons International, said the magazines were shared as mailers with select clients in the cities where the installations stand. That restraint fits the label's reputation for avant-garde work and discreet branding, and it means no general print sale was announced.

What the installations show

A series of pillars wrapped in archival Six pages has taken over the floor at Comme des Garçons Aoyama in Tokyo. The same treatment fills the outdoor courtyard at Dover Street Market Paris, so each city gets its own version of the idea.

A window exhibition of images has also opened at Dover Street Market's London outpost, and it can be viewed from the exterior of the store. Six is on view there until November 13, during Frieze London, which gives the revival a fixed end date in one city.

The first issue defined the title in its own words: “Six is the sixth sense. It is the sense of the surreal. Although the sixth sense is impossible to describe, ‘flair’ may be one aspect of this sense.” The new installations apply that logic to buildings.

Across the sites the architecture itself is wrapped in blown-up images from archival issues. Pages that once sat in a bound magazine become columns and window displays, which turns a reading object into something visitors walk around or view from the street.

A companion collection of 12 tees, each emblazoned with art from the magazine, is available online and in person at Dover Street Market. Selected artworks from Six are printed across the set, and the collection runs for a limited period. No end date was given.

Comme des Garçons is Kawakubo's label, and Dover Street Market is the multi-brand store environment associated with it. For anyone choosing a printed tee, our guide to the best T-shirts for men sets the plain basics that this art-led drop departs from.

Revivals are a pattern in our recent coverage. Hublot brought back its 1980 gold-on-rubber MDM, and MB&F revived the Legacy Machine 1 as the LM1 EVO from $109,000. Comme des Garçons is reviving a paper object, and the price of its tees was not stated.

What comes next

The London window closes on November 13. The tee collection has no stated end date, and the print mailer went only to selected clients. Neither Joffe nor the brand has said whether further issues of Six will follow this one.

The original magazine lasted eight editions between 1988 and 1991. Whether the new issue is a single return tied to Frieze or the start of a regular run is the open question, and our coverage of style will follow any announcement.