comme des garcons x beatles

“For Rei Kawakubo’s hotly anticipated collaboration with The Beatles, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. In fact, the logo of Apple Corps Ltd. — the London-based company that manages the legacy and musical catalogue of the British band — sits next to Kawakubo’s signature polkadots on a range of travel bags, the core of the collection, along with shirts and T-shirts.

Priced from around $115 for a T-shirt up to $860 for the most expensive bag, The Beatles/Comme des Garçons label is to launch Nov. 20 in Tokyo at the Trading Museum, a new Comme store concept in the Gyre building. Dover Street Market, Kawakubo’s multibrand emporium in London, is to host the British launch on Nov. 27, with a further commercial rollout planned for 2010.” WWD

Two heads are better than one, and at Comme des Garcons, two brands, it seems, sell better than one. No strangers to collaborations, co-branded temporary lines have become the mainstay of the CdG family.While I have enjoyed and have been surprised by many of their past collaborations, even more leave me cold and thinking it is some sort of souless money making scam, an evil necessary only to keep the mainlines running. But recent news of CdG's collaboration on a line of bags and tees with the Beatles left me puzzled. I am immediately reminded of the Rolling Stones collection of the Homme Plus ss06 collection and the earlier Pink Panther collection (currently being reissued in the Home Plus Evergreen line), both of which were full collections with the benefit of having classic comme construction as a foundation and a breadth of pieces

The Beatles collaboration, as a line of only bags and tees sounds like something produced just to make money with little work involved except to tack on logoes onto a rather banal product that had already been designed. Having seen this lone picture of the outcome of the collaboration, I am tempted to think it might be something a little more than a just a blatant merchandising venture, but my skeptics's hat refuses to come off my head.

Rei, Rei, Rei..... when will you stop.