Would you ever wear a logo down there? Men too will say «My eyes are up there»

«You want to put the logo somewhere someone’s gonna look», once said Tom Ford in an interview, revealing that his jeans had an almost invisible TF monogram sewn onto the fly. One of those micro-details that are very "Fordian," so to speak, where discretion and boldness mix – after all, it was the Texan designer who cemented the "Sex Sells" principle in fashion. Similarly, a laced closure fastens the fly of Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s pants (who included a crotch logo in his SS22) and has already become one of his most recognizable signatures, along with the extremely low waist of the pants themselves. But while the tiny stitching on Tom Ford's jeans is what we would call an Easter egg in Internet jargon, a hidden detail that can only be seen if you look for it, the story of logos placed on the body's most sensitive areas is not driven by the same sense of subtlety. Quite the opposite. According to Vogue, which recently discussed the persistence of crotch logos in today's fashion, it was Nigo who first slapped A Bathing Ape’s logo on the front of his pants in 2002 – around the same time logos from Evisu and Juicy Couture appeared on the back of jeans and sweatpants. The aim of this placement wasn’t exactly sophistication, so it’s no surprise that in less than a decade, these logos spread to the cheekier fringes of streetwear, aimed at young people whose uniform always included sweatpants or oversized jeans of some kind. But how did these strategically placed logos survive the decade of streetwear that followed?

It could be said, in fact, that the streetwear boom, bringing sportswear to an increasingly mainstream market, may have sanitized streetwear itself, increasing the use of logos but trying to make individual pieces relatively more refined. So much so that from that now distant era, the only crotch logos remembered are those of Pyrex and Boy London. But they actually appeared elsewhere too: in one of Riccardo Tisci’s early collections for Givenchy, for example, the star that would later become one of the brand's unofficial logos (bearing a strong resemblance to the logo on Nigo's jeans worn by Pharrell for years) was already placed strategically, but outside of fashion shows, the brand would produce sweatpants with the real logo, which are still sold today. Years later, in the very first Off-White collection, for example, and the SS14 of Hood by Air.

To sum it up, the style exists outside of the flashiest streetwear insofar as a certain brand engages with the Y2K world that has so heavily influenced past and present collections in recent years. From the perspective of someone who has seen brands come and go in their eternal cycle, one might say that only in cases like that of Corteiz will the crotch logo have a raison d'être, that is, in cases where its presence is supported by a particularly high level of cultural credibility. Even though one cannot deny that in recent times, the obsession with logoed underwear, whether it's Willy Chevarria's fake-worn boxers, Gucci's short shorts, Coperni’s suggestive front pocket, or Miu Miu's visible underwear, fashion seems to have developed a fascination with the anatomical areas below the equator.