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CLESSTE’s ongoing GORE-TEX collaboration with +Phenix returns for fall in four colorways, priced at ¥44,000 and dropping August 26 at 8pm.
CLESSTE drops the fall edition of its CITY MASSIVE UTILITY PANTS on August 26 at 8pm Japan time, restocking a pattern the Tokyo label has run through its +Phenix line all year. Four colorways go up at once: Black, a Black x White split, Asphalt Gray, and Camel Beige, each priced at ¥44,000 and carrying the internal style code CLS-2604-GTX. Every version ships in two sizes, cut for the brand’s usual unisex range.
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Nothing about the release format is a surprise to anyone tracking CLESSTE this year. The label has treated this exact silhouette as a recurring seasonal fixture, pushing it out in spring colorways back in April and again in June before folding it into the fall lineup now. What changes each time is mostly the palette and the seasonal framing, not the pattern underneath it, which is part of the point. CLESSTE has built its +Phenix line less around one-off statement pieces and more around a rotating handful of core shapes it keeps refining, and the City Massive Utility Pants have become one of the anchors of that rotation.
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The partnership behind the pants goes back further than either brand advertises directly on the product page. +phenix is the urban outdoor offshoot of phenix, a skiwear label that got its start in Japan in 1952 and spent the following decades building a name in technical snowsports gear before branching into everyday city wear. Where the parent phenix brand still centers on the slopes, +phenix exists specifically to carry that DNA into contexts its founders never designed for: commuting, travel, general city life, the kind of daily wear that never sees snow but still benefits from genuine outdoor engineering.
CLESSTE, for its part, has spent the better part of the past two years building its entire GORE-TEX-facing output around this one collaborator. Scroll through the WINDSTOPPER® by GORE-TEX LABS series on CLESSTE’s own site and the same pairing shows up again and again, applied across military-style overpants, balloon cargo pants, worker pants, half pants, and now this particular utility silhouette in both half and full-length cuts. It reads less like a one-season collab and more like a standing production line CLESSTE has folded into its regular seasonal drops, with +Phenix supplying the technical fabric relationship and CLESSTE handling the pattern work and city-facing styling.
The current catalog under that shared series page runs deep. Alongside the City Massive Utility Pants and their half-pant counterpart, CLESSTE lists a City Barrel Leg Pants, a City Mega Pocket Balloon Cargo Pants and matching half version, a Double Knee Curved Worker Pants, a City Uniform Ventilation Pants, a City Uniform Zipup L/S Shirt, and both a standard and a Twill version of the City Military Half Pants. Some of these have already cycled through multiple seasonal colorways of their own, following the same release rhythm as the pants covered here. CLESSTE also folded pieces from the line into its own retail calendar this year, featuring a City Utility Balloon piece from the +Phenix collaboration as a pickup item at its two-day 2026 Spring Limited Collection event at the brand’s Gaienmae flagship store in April, alongside first looks at other spring and summer arrivals.
CLESSTE +phenix Windstopper By GORE-TEX Labs Technical Pants
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The design brief for this particular pair traces back to CLESSTE’s own house archive rather than anything +Phenix originated. According to the brand’s own product copy, the City Massive Utility Pants rework MASSIVE PANTS, a wide-leg silhouette that has been part of CLESSTE’s lineup since the label’s earliest days. The fall version keeps that model’s defining trait, a rounded, voluminous leg built on a curved pattern rather than a straight cut, and updates it with the kind of work detailing CLESSTE leans on across its utility-coded pieces: a hammer loop, back pockets, and an elastic waistband with an internal drawcord that lets the pants sit beltless without losing shape.
It’s a fairly literal case of a brand digging into its own back catalog for source material rather than reaching outward for reference, which tracks with how CLESSTE talks about its own design process elsewhere on the site. The MASSIVE PANTS lineage shows up under multiple sub-names across the current catalog, including a straight MASSIVE PANTS reissue and a MASSIVE TWISTED variant with added side darts, suggesting the house treats it as a foundational block to be reshaped season over season rather than a single finished design.
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The technical layer comes entirely from the fabric partnership, and CLESSTE is specific about what it’s using and why. WINDSTOPPER® products by GORE-TEX LABS sits under the broader GORE-TEX umbrella, a material line that traces back to GORE-TEX’s original 1976 breathable waterproof membrane. The WINDSTOPPER naming itself is more recent history: the fabric launched as GORE-TEX INFINIUM in the fall of 2018, built around wind resistance, insulation, and breathability, before Gore renamed it WINDSTOPPER® products by GORE-TEX LABS in the fall of 2023.
For a pair of pants, the practical case is straightforward. The membrane blocks wind entirely rather than just slowing it down, which matters more for lower-body pieces than people tend to assume, since wind chill through pant fabric is one of the more underrated sources of discomfort in cold-weather dressing. It stays breathable through the same porous membrane structure GORE-TEX built its name on, letting sweat vapor escape rather than trap against skin, and it carries water resistance on top through a durable water repellent finish, though CLESSTE notes the seams themselves aren’t taped for full waterproofing, so this is weather resistance for daily wear rather than storm-grade protection.
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Construction is consistent across all four colorways: a 100% polyester outer paired with a 100% polyester lining, manufactured in China under CLESSTE’s usual production setup. CLESSTE lists two sizes for the run. Size 1 measures a 78 to 100cm waist, 34cm rise, 69cm inseam, 42cm thigh, and a 28.5cm hem opening, styled on the brand’s reference model at 168cm. Size 2 goes up to an 82 to 104cm waist, 35cm rise, 73cm inseam, 43cm thigh, and a 29.5cm hem, shown on a reference model at 183cm. The balloon leg shape means the actual room through the thigh and calf runs noticeably fuller than those waist numbers alone would suggest, which is generally the point of a pattern built off CLESSTE’s own wide-leg archive rather than a standard tapered cut.
All four colorways, Black, Black x White, Asphalt Gray, and Camel Beige, go live simultaneously through CLESSTE’s own webstore at 8pm on August 26, sold as in-stock inventory rather than pre-order, meaning confirmed sizing and immediate shipping once the drop goes up. Given how quickly the label’s earlier releases in this same sil moved through their spring runs, colorways here have a real chance of selling out within the first stretch of the drop.
CLESSTE doesn’t currently list international stockists for this specific style on its own site, running the release exclusively through its own webstore, which ships internationally with pricing converted at checkout across a long list of supported currencies and regions. That keeps the piece squarely inside the brand’s own direct-to-consumer model rather than spreading it across the usual network of Tokyo select shops and overseas retailers that tend to pick up CLESSTE’s more limited runs. For a house that treats GORE-TEX collaboration pieces as a recurring seasonal category rather than a headline event, that distribution choice tracks with everything else about how this particular release has been handled: steady, repeatable, and built to restock rather than to hype a single moment.
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