Inspiration can come from some quite unusual places. Especially in the case of Mr Raf Simons. Over a 25-year career – which has taken in stints at Jil Sander, Dior and Calvin Klein as well as collaborations with adidas, and his own eponymous label – the Belgian designer has regularly dipped into popular culture, turning clothing into a wearable Pinterest board. Famously drawn to Britain’s post-punk music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s – most notably Joy Division and New Order and the artwork of Mr Peter Saville – he’s also turned his attention to iconic filmmakers, including Messrs Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and Steven Spielberg. But his latest piece, itself destined to be a cult item, is influenced not so much by a movie or album, rather a real-world physical place. A building, in fact: the hospital.

Not “the hospital”, as in some now-defunct industrial nightclub in Manchester or Berlin, but an actual hospital. You know, where you go when you’re sick, when your children are born or if you “sat on” something you shouldn’t have.

Limited to just 100 pieces, this T-shirt plays with the ubiquitous article of American workwear while employing the crisp, starched fabric of hospital robes. Upon this base, the designer himself has hand painted bold text and iconography. It means that not only is each item incredibly rare – and a guaranteed collectors’ item as a result – but no two tees in this run are the same.

Given that the hospital is the place where many of us experience both the beginning and end of this all-too-fleeting enterprise we call life, Mr Simons might be referencing something far more poignant and universal than even Power, Corruption & Lies: the notion of ouroboros, the mythical serpent eating its own tail, symbolising the cyclical nature of existence, what Mr William Shakespeare coined as the “mortal coil”. Then again, it could just be a (highly covetable) T-shirt with paint splattered on it.

All we can say is that we appreciate the Technique.