Kosuke Kawamura's "T-shirts are life."
-Vol.04- Cabaret Voltaire T-shirt

It's the most expensive T-shirt I've ever paid for. Over 100,000 yen. But seriously, it's not worth it (laughs). It's a T-shirt by Cabaret Voltaire, an industrial music group formed in the UK in the 1970s, and I've never seen anything else like it, so I think it's incredibly rare. I found it at LABORATORY®, and (Okamoto) Reiji and (Murakoshi) Yudai (Laboratory® staff) contacted me, saying, "Kawamura-san, you definitely have to have this." They both knew I was a huge fan of Cabaret Voltaire.

I think I bought it about three years ago. There was a (vintage) band T-shirt boom going on, and people with money were buying them up mercilessly. I was talking to Yudai about how sad it would be if such a precious item were to end up overseas instead of in Japan, and we'd never see it again. But to me, T-shirts are like books; I wanted to buy them for much cheaper than the market price without paying a lot of money. When I buy things, I've always enjoyed buying ultra-rare items for less than the market price, ever since I was a child. So, even though I knew it was against my policy, I was worried that I just couldn't buy it. I didn't buy it on the spot and said, "I'll go home and think about it," and got home around 9pm. Then, around midnight or 1am that night, I contacted him and said, "I'll buy it after all!" and went to buy it the next day.

Nowadays, if you have the money and time, you can honestly get pretty much anything, right? But I came up with a lot of excuses for going against my policy, like, "I want you (Kawamura) to have it," or I'm not competing at an auction but buying it from a friend's shop, and I'm buying branded items that cost over 100,000 yen, for example (laughs). Also, because it's one of my roots that led me to the brands of my friends and seniors, I decided that even if it cost over 100,000 yen, it was okay. This will be the first and last time I go against my policy and buy a T-shirt that costs over 100,000 yen (laughs).