Even Comme des Garçons Is Launching a Direct-to-Consumer Brand
The Comme des Garçons empire is sprouting another arm, this time in the form of an online-only direct-to-consumer brand, WWD reports. First off: this is great news for fans of the legendary Rei Kawakubo-led brand famous for fashion that’s closer to museum-worthy than wearable. In theory, the new brand will cater to fans who can’t afford to buy into CdG’s wilder (and wildly more expensive) items, and want more options like the googly-eyed heart tees available through the brand's PLAY line. Direct-to-consumer is a business model-cum-buzzword typically used by “disruptive” upstart brands looking to cut out the middleman and trim overhead costs—Everlane and Warby Parker being the most famous examples—but CdG is an established and very cool brand with a lead designer who was the focus of an entire Met Gala (and corresponding Costume Institute exhibition) last year. What does it mean that a brand like Comme is getting into the online-only business?
We’ll have to wait to find out—there are few details about Comme’s new brand. Adrian Joffe, Comme des Garçons’ CEO, told WWD this much at an opening party for the brand’s retail shop Dover Street Market in China: “Nobody knows yet, but what I can tell you is it’s going to be Internet based.” We also know that it’s launching in July, and that Kawakubo herself is designing the website. Representatives of the brand did not respond to a request for comment. Honestly, that’s enough to go on: just the fact that Comme des Garçons is launching a new brand is noteworthy—and the fact that it’s direct-to-consumer makes it doubly so.
The new brand’s business model says a lot about where the fashion industry is going: Direct-to-consumer is now a legitimate business move. Late last year, menswear fave Public School announced it was rebooting as a direct-to-consumer outfit. Scott Sternberg, who was previously the designer at Band of Outsiders, recently made his comeback by launching the new online-only brand Entireworld. Even Nike wants to start interacting with customers on a more personal level: recently, the Swoosh purchased the analytics company Zodiac, which will help Nike with consumer data. The acquisition prompted Quartz to declare, in perhaps hyperbolic terms, that “Nike is trying to become the next great direct-to-consumer brand”.
This doesn’t mean that the value of getting stocked by a store like Barneys has completely evaporated. We’ve seen brands like Everlane realize that physical retail is still an important piece of building huge brands, and wholesale and physical retail will no doubt continue to be important parts of Comme des Garçons’ business. But brands like Nike, Public School, and now Comme Des Garçons are coming around on the practice makes the whole online-only thing feel a lot more legit.
Comme des Garçons is known for being cutting-edge, so if direct-to-consumer is going to grow even more widespread, it makes sense Comme is one of the first major brands to make online-only part of its business. And maybe it makes more sense if you think of it this way: direct-to-consumer is sort of a watered-down version of opening your own flagship store. Brands get to send all their merchandise there and, critically, get to hold onto all the shopping data that accumulates in that store. And Comme des Garçons has some experience with that: their Dover Street Market is just about the coolest store in each of the five cities it exists in. Mostly, we're excited. We’ve long heard the phrase the Warby Parker of X tossed around to describe direct-to-consumer brands, but we didn’t think we’d ever get to say the Warby Parker of wavy designer Japanese garms.
