Corteiz and Skepta's Konnichiwa Anniversary Capsule Is Already Three-Quarters Sold Out

Corteiz, the London label Clint Ogbenna built almost entirely on password-gated drops and guerrilla releases, spent Sunday putting Skepta's Konnichiwa on clothes. The album turned ten this year — it came out May 6, 2016, on Skepta's own Boy Better Know label, and went on to beat David Bowie, Radiohead and Kano to that year's Mercury Prize. Corteiz's capsule treats it less like a museum piece and more like something still worth wearing.

Konnichiwa is generally credited with pulling grime back into the mainstream after years of the genre being treated as a UK underground curiosity: it reached number two on the UK Albums Chart, topped the UK Independent Albums Chart, and had sold more than 191,000 copies in Britain by 2019, enough for a Gold certification. That commercial run, plus the Mercury win, is most of why a decade-later capsule reads as a real anniversary rather than a label cashing in on a name.

The sixteen-piece collection leans on the record's own language rather than generic merch graphics: a Shutdown Tricot Track Top and Pant named for the album's second single, released in 2015, an It Ain't Safe range (a Litework jacket, a mesh jersey, a mesh short and waffle thermals in black and cream) built around one of the album's best-known tracks, a Text Me Back Tee and a Ladies Hit Squad baby tee named for two more tracks, a lime Revenge Tee, and a run of Konnichiwa 10th Anniversary tees in five colorways. A white New Era 59Fifty fitted cap carries BBK's branding alongside Corteiz's own.

Corteiz

Pricing ran from £35 for the tees up to £195 for the Litework jacket, with the Shutdown tracksuit at £120 for the top and £110 for the pant. It moved fast: checking Corteiz's own site two days after the Sunday release, 12 of the 16 pieces were already marked sold out — the cap, every It Ain't Safe piece, the Text Me Back and Revenge tees, and every Konnichiwa tee colorway except black. Only the white Shutdown track top and pant, the black Konnichiwa tee and the Ladies Hit Squad baby tee remained available.

Corteiz

Corteiz doesn't run like a normal retailer — crtz.xyz stays password-protected outside of drop windows, and releases are typically flagged through Instagram rather than a conventional launch calendar — which makes a sell-through this fast less about hype manufactured for the occasion and more a read on how much of an audience Konnichiwa itself still has. Skepta's tracks are ten years old; the tees selling out in two days suggest the record hasn't aged into nostalgia merchandise so much as stayed in circulation.