Of these, Shayne Oliver, of Hood by Air, has stuck out by creating a line premised on his own logo, not repurposing others. “It represents power, a language, a mind-state,” he said, speaking of the strong HBA box logo, one of the most definitive marks of recent years. “But it’s a sense of commentary, too. An encrypted code.”

Like Mr. Preston, Mr. Oliver, taking what he calls a minimalist “Helmut Lang approach to logos,” also plays with unusual placement — at the top of the chest, on the lower sleeve — and sizing. (They both owe something to the Raf Simons 2003 Consumed collection as well, with its truncated logos splashed across garments.) The result is not just the refining of what are essentially streetwear ideas, but high fashion at its most legible and consumable.

Mr. Preston began making his T-shirts at the beginning of this year. Initially, in order to build mystique and deflect legal snoops, he passed off the design as a factory defect he’d stumbled upon. But eventually, you couldn’t go to a certain kind of party without seeing one or two of them. They began to take on a tribal quality, which was the point. (When New York Fashion Week wanted to make an official T-shirt for the spring shows, they turned to Mr. Preston, who made a version of his T-shirt with modeling agency logos.)

“People look for communities and families to belong to,” said Julie Anne Quay, the founder of VFiles. “They’re saying, ‘I identify with that.’ It’s just like wearing a football jersey.” (This phenomenon has been literalized in the recent T-shirts and jerseys made by Les Plus Dores, which feature designer surnames and birth years on the backs where a player name and number would ordinarily go.)

At VFiles, which is ground zero for this movement, the racks teem with logos, from ’90s rave and streetwear revival brands like X-Girl to the pieces by Mr. Preston, Mr. Oliver and Mr. Fry.

Opening Ceremony, too, has been vital to this moment. “About four or five years ago we had a conversation,” said Humberto Leon, co-owner and creative director of Opening Ceremony, referring to Carol Lim, his business partner — “and we said, ‘O.K., it’s time to bring logos back.’” Both grew up in the California suburbs in the early 1990s, where among young people, he said, “the logo or the brand was what created these mini-communities.”