Legendary Japanese fashion house Comme des Garçons kick off their Autumn/Winter 2018 SHIRT collection by tapping the estate of the late, great street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat for a capsule of collaborative tees.

First rising to fame in the late 1970s – under his graffiti tag SAMO – for his works around the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Basquiat was part of a cultural hotbed in the area, where the worlds of hip-hop, punk and street art coalesced. Through his graffiti and later gallery paintings, Basquiat addressed both social and personal issues of wealth imbalance, cultural segregation and the racial tension of the time.  His impressionist style and appropriation of pop culture icons gained him wide acclaim in the art world. After his premature death from heroin overdose at the age of 27, collectors have been clamouring for Basquiat’s work, with one of his paintings recently fetching an astonishing $110.5M at auction — a record breaking figure.

Also famous for flaunting rules and norms, Comme des Garçons choice of Basquiat pieces for the capsule makes total sense. Lead designer Rei Kawakubo has always carved her own path in the fashion world, both in her designs and the way she runs CDG as a brand, so the affinity with an artist like Basquiat is clear; in fact, Basquiat himself did a catwalk show for the brand’s Homme Plus line in 1987, a year before his death.

Celebrating the artist’s life, the t-shirts depict some of the artist’s most famous works — such as Bronze and In Italian — and boast block printing in complementary colours, like mini works of art in their own right. The quality, as expected of Comme des Garçons, is second to none, and branding is absent, letting the art speak for itself. You don’t need an art degree or a private gallery: they’re just good prints, minus the multi-million dollar price-tag, on quality tees from a legendary brand.

Grab yourself a piece of wearable art history today: the Comme des Garçons Basquiat collection is available instore and online now from Aphrodite Clothing.