Rei Kawakubo has said that if she could have invented one garment, it would have been the white shirt. “It’s a fundamental part of a man’s wardrobe,” her husband, translator, and company CEO, Adrian Joffe, said on her behalf. “Shirt, jacket, and pants are the fundamental basis.”

There’s irony in the fact that Comme des Garçons operates a menswear brand called Shirt, dedicated to finding myriad ways to deconstruct a button-down.