The Kids See Ghosts hoodie prints its own credits: Murakami’s art, Virgil’s layout

Kid Cudi and Ye played Kids See Ghosts to a room in Los Angeles on the night of 7 Jun 2018. Everyone else listened on the WAV app from 8pm Pacific. The people in the room didn’t leave empty-handed: they went home with a hoodie. Tremaine Emory, then running No Vacancy Inn, posted his to his Instagram stories before the album had even dropped.

It’s a hoodie with Takashi Murakami’s art on the back and Virgil Abloh’s name in the small print, and it was a party favour before it was merch.

A ghost on a twisting tree

The back carries Murakami’s cover for the album, the ghost on its twisting tree, in an altered colourway. Hypebeast traced the imagery to Japanese folklore and ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and reported that Murakami pulled from the colour palette he’d used on Ye’s Graduation cover.

The front’s almost bare: KIDS SEE GHOSTS, then “Kid Cudi, Kanye West, Seven Songs, Recorded Album, ©2018”. The album title runs down the right sleeve in red, scrawled like marker.

The credits are on the garment

Nobody needed a press release to know who did what. The hoodie says it under the print, in small type. One line reads “Original Artwork ©2018 Takashi Murakami / Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.” The next reads “Garment Layout ©2018 Virgil Abloh”. It’s a merch credit list you can wear. Hypebeast reported it the same way that week: Virgil arranged the pieces, and Murakami supplied the graphics.

$65 to $150, by the next day

You didn’t need a seat for long. By the next day shop.kanyewest.com had three pieces, priced $65 to $150, Hypebeast reported. The hoodie and a long sleeve tee came in one pale sand shade, the coach jacket in black. The FADER noted each one came with a digital download of the album.

The album itself came out on 8 Jun 2018. By then the hoodie had already been on Instagram.