Can COMME des GARÇONS' Coolest Imprint Redeem a Luggage Label?

COMME des GARÇONS is easily one of the most collaborative labels in all of fashion. The Japanese giant and its ample sub-labels make many shoes, special scents, bespoke sportswear, and even one-off luxury items every season, cosigning companies as famous as Nike and as low-key as Briefing.

Briefing is a bag brand founded in the late '90s that continues to quietly operate as a maker of militaristic-leaning accessories. It's far from a household name here in America, where Briefing still produces some of its goods, but founder Yuji Nakagawa has established a solid amount of visibility in Japan.

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As such, amongst the many Spring/Summer 2025 collaborations for COMME des GARÇONS HOMME, the workwear-oriented menswear CDG sub-label overseen by Junya Watanabe, there lies a concise Briefing team-up that yields some solidly cool stuff.

It's not necessarily breakthrough product, to be clear, but it's a perfect tangible representation of where CDG HOMME is right now.

Here we have a sleek webbing belt, various technical caps, and the crown jewel: A fisherman-meets-military vest-bag thing. And though it's all in all-black, there are plenty of thoughtful little touches throughout, including D-ring attachments, camo lining, and rollercoaster-style fastening for the belt.

You can see strains of Watanabe's more evocative inclinations in the vest, which lightly recalls his excellent multipouch wearables from several years back but is admittedly a fair bit less dynamic.

Still, a solid showing for the quietly excellent CDG HOMME collections, which often include partnerships as disparate as Blundstone, New Balance, and Japanese bagmaker PORTER — all while Watanabe is busting out collabs aplenty for his eponymous menswear line, mind you.

CDG HOMME has become the coolest non-mainline CDG imprint as of late. Its recent collections are packed with ultra-wearable bomber jackets, boxy sweaters, and high-rise trousers, all made in Japan and all reasonably priced for a CDG sub-label that isn't named "Play."

Its specialty is workwear-leaning menswear, very much up Watanabe's alley, more even more grounded and certainly more approachable than the famously outré HOMME PLUS (and more interesting than the suit-centric HOMME DEUX).

Perhaps because CDG HOMME's name is so close to HOMME PLUS, though, and because it doesn't do runway shows or even lookbooks, it gets lost in the shuffle.

And at worst, one could argue that CDG HOMME is perhaps a bit too "normal" for its own good. Its Briefing collaboration, far from the most explosive CDG item of the season, is hardly evidence to the contrary. But, hey, if being wearable is a bad thing, then who wants to be good?

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