LOGO-MANIA

Definitely Not Knockoffs: High Fashion Logos Are Making a Comeback, Thanks to Calvin Klein, Gucci, and the Hadids

From Mahershala Ali and Gigi Hadid’s waistbands to practically everything ever produced by Demna Gvasalia, designers and celebs alike are showing off their labels loud and proud.

by Steph Eckardt

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Courtesy of @asaprocky

The streetwear brand Supreme has always had a cult following, but this year, it hit peak hysteria when it ended up pairing with another logo-famous cult house: Louis Vuitton. The collaboration, which was unveiled in January, and teased hopeful prospective shoppers for months, finally rolled out this summer—to lines that stretched across the world for blocks and blocks and blocks. (Except in New York City, where a community board unanimously decided that the hype would be too disruptive to the city’s eternally disrupted streets.)

It was at that moment, perhaps, that we hit logo-mania—something that, as most things these days, found a recent resurgence with Demna Gvasalia, who first found fame by slapping the delivery service DHL’s McDonald’s-colored logo onto his Vetements designs and sending them down the runway on the Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy—or Гоша Рубчинский, the cyrillic version of his name that he emblazons on most items in his own collections. That cheeky move—along with a Juicy Couture logo—no doubt helped Gvasalia land the much tonier job as creative director of the storied house Balenciaga—whose logo he soon turned into what looked like Bernie Sanders’s red, white, and blue campaign slogan, plus slapped onto everything from $1,100 shopping bags to shin guards. (The name of the luxury conglomerate Kering, on the other hand, was relegated to a hoodie.)

Logos at Balenciaga Fall 2017 during Paris Fashion Week: Men’s.

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Gvasalia is hardly the only cult designer to get into the logo game: The industry’s current reigning kings, Alessandro Michele and Raf Simons, have also been screaming out the names of their new jobs. Since Michele took over at Gucci, he’s made the house’s interlocking G’s stick out even amidst his cacophany of designs—and of course, thereby making them turn up around the waists of his stans and muses like Hari Nef, Petra Collins, Dakota Johnson, A$AP Rocky, and soon, maybe even aliens.

How To Wear High Fashion Logos Just Like Kendall Jenner and Karlie Kloss

Karlie Kloss in Gucci rides a bike as she films around West Village on September 09, 2016 in New York, NY.

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Sofia Richie at the opening of Wonderland Pop-Up store on January 19, 2017 in London, England.

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Karlie Kloss attends the adidas New York Flagship Preview Party on November 29, 2016 in New York City.

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Miranda Kerr attends MIRANDA + MOTHER Capsule Launch Benefiting The Royal Hospital For Women at Catch LA on February 1, 2017 in West Hollywood, California.

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Romee Strijd wearing a Gucci tshirt, leopard print kaclet, cropped denim jeans, ankle boots outside Tory Burch on February 14, 2017 in New York City.

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Kate Bosworth is seen arriving at the Calvin Klein Collection fashion show with new chief creative officer Raf Simons during New York Fashion Week on February 10, 2017 in New York City.

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Kendall Jenner leaves her hotel on March 1, 2017 in Paris, France.

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Florence Welch attends the Gucci event during Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2017/18 on February 22, 2017 in Milan, Italy.

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Karlie Kloss attends the Christian Dior show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2017/2018 at Musee Rodin on March 3, 2017 in Paris, France.

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Cara Delevingne attends the Chanel show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2017/2018 on March 7, 2017 in Paris, France.

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Camille Rowe attends the Christian Dior show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2017/2018 at Musee Rodin on March 3, 2017 in Paris, France.

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Bella Hadid seen on the streets of Manhattan on April 23, 2017 in New York City.

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Kendall Jenner is seen on June 01, 2017 in New York City.

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Chloe Sevigny attends Gucci & The Cinema Society Host A Screening Of Roadside Attractions’ “Beatriz At Dinner” at Metrograph on June 6, 2017 in New York City.

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Ella Purnell attends The Serpentine Galleries Summer Party at The Serpentine Gallery on June 28, 2017 in London, England.

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Sophie Turner is seen at LAX on July 13, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

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Bella Hadid is seen on July 17, 2017 in New York City.

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Rowan Blanchard attends the Chanel dinner celebrating Lucia Pica and the Travel Diary Makeup Collection at Capo on July 12, 2017 in Santa Monica, California.

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Brie Larson is seen on July 31, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

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Charlize Theron attends the ‘Atomic Blonde’ world premiere at Stage Theater on July 17, 2017 in Berlin, Germany.

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Simons, for his part, has been obligingly sticking with Calvin Klein’s decades-old logo-mania, though revamping it somewhat with the help of his bud Peter Saville and relocating it to the waistbands of a much fresher crop of underwear models somehow even cooler than Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber, Bella Hadid, and dozens of others: the beloved cast of Moonlight, Simons’s new muse, Ashton Sanders, and the delightfully toned Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali.

Underwear has also been a major component of Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri‘s tactic: Bella Hadid’s tulle dress at the house’s masked ball earlier this year not only freed her nipples, but showcased the same slogan that also showed up on the bra Charlize Theron wore as a shirt last month to one of the Atomic Blonde premieres: “J’ADIOR” a pun that was bien sûr paired with the name of the French house. (Chiuri’s other slogan, “we should all be feminists,” seems to have a bit too many characters to squeeze onto a waistline.)

Charlize Theron at Atomic Blonde’s Berlin premiere, Mahershala Ali in the Calvin Klein underwear campaign, and Bella Hadid at Dior’s masked ball.

Matthias Nareyek/Calvin Klein/Getty Images

The logo-mania has also extended over to Nike, Adidas, and Fila—the latter of which Rubchinskiy actually once collaborated with, in a very Gvasalia move. After all, logos have always been a more accessible way of showing off ties to high-fashion brands, too: Take Comme des Garçons’s signature heart for its much lower priced “Play” line; the Tommy Hilfiger flag that Gigi Hadid has now brought back in style; the easily identifiable HBA logo that arguably in part made Hood by Air a streetwear staple; and, of course, those bending the ropes around Vetements’s high-fashion prices and going straight to the source, dressing up as DHL carriers themselves.

Once again, though, we’ve come full circle: Earlier this summer, it was DHL who unveiled a “capsule collection” with Vetements, though a bit more on their own terms: this time around, it was a DHL package, not a thousand-dollar shopping bag, that served as the main accessory.

Related: Vetements and Tommy Hilfiger’s Upcoming Collaboration Promises to Be Logo Heaven

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