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Excerpted from ROLE MODELS by John Waters. Published in June by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, forthcoming in December from Beautiful Books Ltd in the UK. Copyright (c) 2010 by John Waters. All rights reserved.
DIDVKLRQP\WK6XSSRVHGO\RQWKHÀQDOGD\DIWHUWKHÀQDOVDOHLQDVHFUHWORFDWLRQWKH remaining stock, the stuff absolutely no one in the world wanted even reduced in price by 80 SHUFHQWLVEXUQHGLQDJLDQWERQÀUHVRDVWRQRWHQGXSLQVRPHFRPPRQRXWOHWVKRS(YHQ LIWKLVWDOHLVQ·WWUXHFRXOGQ·WZHKDYHWKHÀUHIRUWKHÀUVWWLPHIRUUHDODWP\%DOWLPRUHVKRS" 7KLQNRIWKHDPD]LQJSKRWRJUDSK&RXOGQ·W5HLOLJKWWKHÀUVWPDWFKKHUVHOI"7KLQNRIWKH polyester-and-rayon-polluted smoke drifting over the Armistead Gardens neighborhood and the magic spell it could possibly cast on the unsuspecting neighbors. The ecstasy of rejection, the raptures of unavailability, and the open-sesame of Rei’s vision could turn this beautiful downscale section of Baltimore into an international fashion mecca. Rei, I have a wish list for you. I know you’re busy. I realize you don’t take “notes” (the QHZQZRUGIRUDOOÀOPGLUHFWRUV EXW,MXVWKDYHVRPHLGHDVIRUIXWXUHRXWÀWVWKDW,ZRXOG happily pay you too much money for. I hate weddings; I’ve never had fun at one in my life. I know you’ve designed a black wedding dress with a white veil, and it was so cutting-edge Modern Bride. But how about something for me to wear to a wedding to take my mind off the romance pressure I feel pulsating around me? Something secret, because I’m not a rude SHUVRQDQG\RXQHYHUZDQW\RXURXWÀWWRXSVWDJHWKHEULGH·VRUJURRP·V+RZDERXWDQ elegant black wool Vincent Price-type suit: on the outside so seemingly conservative and beautifully tailored, but inside lined with the fur of the mice who were living and nesting under the hood of my car in my garage, nibbling away at the engine’s wiring harness and causing about a thousand dollars’ worth of damage? Wearing fur coats always makes one look like an old person, but poisoned or trapped mouse-fur lining seems politically correct to me, especially when the same little fuckers had friends who were setting up house inside the exterior air-conditioning compressor of my Baltimore home and chewing on the wiring. If we hadn’t discovered these little Ben and Willard movie-type wannabes and had turned RQWKHFRROLQJV\VWHPWKHÀUVWKRWGD\WKHVHXQZHOFRPHVTXDWWHUVZRXOGKDYHEHHQJURXQG up by the motor fan blades and their death fumes would have been piped into my home in all their decomposed glory. So what better purpose could their deaths have than to be recycled as fashion? Even their little heads could be designed as buttons for the inside pockets! Let’s talk about the suit pants. Couldn’t they have faux “scraped knees”? You like to see people fall down – here’s the perfect reminder for your customer of the one thing that gives you pleasure. You’ve already done shirts with triple collars, but how about one with an extra arm that hangs in the back under the coat that nobody but me would see or know about? Of course the tie, an item of clothing I love and you seem to rarely design, should be covered with clever soup stains. We know how hard and expensive it is to properly clean a tie, so you can now charge double the price and it will still be a deal, because you’d never have to take it to the dry cleaners. My dream socks that you would create only for me would be mismatched and stretched out with holes where the big toe sticks through (“summer socks,” we used to call these castaways). Your belts would go around me twice and would be tested for possible autoerotic strangulation use. It would be too vulgar to ask you to design faux “skidmark” underwear, so how about white boxers stained from purposely washing them with a load of brightly colored laundry? %XW5HLP\ÀQDOZLVKLVDSDLURIFUHHSLO\VRSKLVWLFDWHGIDX[3LF·13D\VKRHVWKDW,KRSH \RX·OOGHVLJQIRUPHWRZHDULQVLGHP\FORVHG DVP\ZLOOGHPDQGV FRIÀQ/LNHWKHRQHVWKH Moe Howard look-alike, the “shoe bomber,” wore that day on the airplane. Scruffy, ugly oxfords whose hideousness has been negated by your “relentless sobriety,” as the critics have written. Shoes with wires and fuses hanging off them. And real dynamite inside. Scary DQGDJJUHVVLYHIRRWZHDU²WKHSHUIHFWDFFHVVRU\WRP\ÀQDORXWÀW7KHZRUPVJRLQWKH worms go out; the worms play pinochle on my snout. Now I’ll be ready to blast off into Comme des Garçons heaven.
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ADVERTISING Alice Rawsthorn: “Comme des Garçons’s Shirt campaigns are a beacon of inspired eccentricity. Since they began 11 years ago, the ads have featured everything IURPLFHEHUJVJUDIÀWLEOXHVO\ULFVWK century Flemish paintings, trucks, dogs, birds, vintage pins, cave paintings, trucks, dogs, street photography, Pet Shop Boys’ lyrics, underground comics, punk poetry, shredded 1970s porn, the winners of a literary booby prize for the worst opening sentences of novels, a recycled trade advertising campaign, bizarre amateur inventions and the self-portraits of an unknown Danish amateur artist to – once but only once – a bunch of people actually wearing shirts.” Ronnie Cooke Newhouse: “I’ve always been a big big, fan of Rei’s. I was one of four people who started Details magazine in the 1980s. Rei was a sort of demigod to us, and we were one of the ÀUVW PDJD]LQHV WR FRYHU KHU LI QRW WKH ÀUVW LQ $PHULFD :KHQ , ODWHU EHFDPH creative director of Barney’s (the New York department store) I got to know 5HLDQG$GULDQ-RIIH:HVWD\HGLQWRXFK when I left Barney’s, and when I opened my (design) studio in London they spoke to me about working with them.’
Edited by SULEMAN ANAYA and JOERG KOCH
Alice Rawsthorn: “Perhaps because the Shirt campaigns are conceived by a creative director who edits the contents from ready-made imagery rather than by the fashion designer and photographer who produce them, the only consistent thing about them is their inconsistency. Yet collectively they build a compelling portrait of the brand as well as of its creators and the people who will wear the clothes.” Alice Rawsthorn, “CDG Advertisements,” Paradis #5, Fall/Winter 2009.
ANIMAL
“I LOVE ALL ANIMALS.” Rei Kawakubo in Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, “Rei Kawakubo,” Interview Magazine, November 2008.
ANTI-FASHION “In addition to consistently creating collections of clothes that challenge other designers to think outside conventional modes of production and beauty, Rei Kawakubo has also built a considerable international business. In this sense, her contribution could never be regarded as outside or ‘anti’ the fashion industry, though at times its aesthetic may appear to be delightfully at odds with prevailing trends.”
7KHÀUVW&RPPHGHV*DUoRQVVWRUHLQWKH world, 1976
AOYAMA The Tokyo neighborhood is the origin and continued nucleus of the Comme des Garçons universe, where the label’s ÀUVWVWRUHRSHQHGLQ DQGKRPHWR WKLV GDWH RI LWV RIÀFHV VWXGLRV DQG PR ther ÁDJVKLS ARCHITECTURE “Architecture has been largely unable to accept the excessive and formless nature of shopping.” So declared Rem Koolhaas, et al, in a well-known book from 2002. But since the late Seventies and (LJKWLHV ZKHQ VKH RSHQHG KHU ÀUVW WKHQUDGLFDOO\ PLQLPDOLVW ERXWLTXHV ² one was entirely empty, a stunt others are still repeating more than two decades later – Rei Kawakubo has been bringing both excess and formlessness to architecture. Consider her store design heyday of the 1990s and early Noughts – a golden era of blue-dotted glass
showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just happened that my notion was different from everyone else’s.” Rei Kawakubo in Judith Thurman, ´7KH0LVÀWµThe New Yorker, July 4, 2005.
“It’s a choice, one that implies a different approach. French eroticism stands no chance in this game, as the sensitive points of our feminine mythology – waist, hips, WKLJKV²DUHTXLWHVLPSO\DYRLGHGµ French journalist on seeing a Comme des Garçons collection in 1984, cited by Olivier Saillard, Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris) 2010.
AVANT-GARDE Rei Kawakubo believes that being avantgarde has become a cliché.
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Tokyo
New York
Thurman, 2005.
BROKEN BRIDE
Universally admired collection, Autumn/ Winter 2005. The audience received its presentation at the Ecole des Beaux Arts with a seven-minute ovation. Through it, Kawakubo remained backstage. “It wasn’t simply a collection about wedGLQJVDOWKRXJKWKDWPD\KDYHEHHQWKHÀUVW word. By breaking the rules of wedding dresses, by going behind the idea, there was born the further information that marriage is not necessarily happy.”
ARRIVAL
“I never intended to start a revolution. I only came to Paris with the intention of
BERLIN ´-RIIH DQG , VSHQW D GD\ LQ %HUOLQ DW D Comme des Garçons ‘guerilla store,’ which then occupied the former bookshop of the Brecht Museum, on a seedy block in the eastern sector of the city. It is part of an experiment in alternative retailing (inconspicuous consumption) which the company launched in 2004 … Each of the stores is an ephemeral installation that opens without fanfare and closes after a year. Their decorating budgets are less than the price of some handbags at GUCCI and PRADA and original fixtures, including raw cinder blocks and peeling wallpaper, are left as they are found. Brecht might have approved the poetic clothes and the proletarian mise en scène, if not the insurrectionary conceit. ‘But the word “guerilla” as Rei XQGHUVWDQGVLWLVQ·WSROLWLFDO·-RIIHVD\V ‘It refers to a small group of likeminded spirits at odds with the majority. She’s fascinated by the Amish, for example and WKH2UWKRGR[-HZV·µ
BASQUIAT, JEAN-MICHEL
ARIC CHEN, design critic, for 032c.
Penny Martin, The Power of Witches, Showstudio, 2004.
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and swooping hand-brushed aluminum (Tokyo Aoyama and New York Chelsea, respectively, both designed by Future Systems); of spinning stools in shocking red (Paris, by Ab Rogers and Shona Kitchen); of monolithic black (Kyoto, attributed to Kawakubo herself). Working with other designers – or PRUH IUHTXHQWO\ ZLWK KHU ORQJWLPH FRO ODERUDWRU WKH -DSDQHVH DUFKLWHFW 7DNDR Kawasaki – Kawakubo has brought to retail architecture the same brilliantly warped, twisted sensibility that she’s given her fashion. That is to say, in her hands, the body becomes just as deformed as the space it inhabits with the result being, often enough, elusive. Her temporary Comme des Garçons guerilla stores can be given credit (or blame) for the recent pop-up shop mania. Her Dover Street Market, with all its tinshack and Porta-Potty accoutrements, blurs the distinction between department VWRUH OX[XU\ ÁDJVKLS DQG ÁHD PDUNHW :LWK.DZDNXER\RX·UHQHYHUTXLWHVXUH where the thing itself begins and the idea of it ends; her shops are less like spaces than, well, concepts (but please don’t call them “concept shops”). Which is why Kawakubo has in many ways been one of the most interesting architects around. To be sure, her stores have been chockfull of spatial acrobatics; but they have just as easily disappeared. Koolhaas may have had his “epicenters” DV KH FDOOHG KLV 3UDGD ÁDJVKLSV EXW .DZDNXERZDVRQHRIWKHÀUVWWRUHDOL]H that architecture, like shopping and faVKLRQLVÁHHWLQJ
-HDQ0LFKHO%DVTXLDWPRGHORQWKH&RPPHGHV Garçons runway; Paris, Spring-Summer 1987
Rei Kawakubo in Suzy Menkes, “Positive Energy: Comme at 40,” The New York Times, -XQH 000
BUSINESS “Unlike many fashion designers who ÀQG WKHPVHOYHV HPEHGGHG LQ LQGXVWULDO RU ÀQDQFLDO FRQJORPHUDWHV .DZDNXER is president of her own company of 450 employees and retains overall responsibility for both creative and business decisions. Nothing she does is an indulgence; all her work is part of a carefully considered strategy in which economic success is an essential part of maintaining her creative independence.” Sudjic, 1990.
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“She’s in control of every facet of her multimillion-dollar brand Comme des Garçons« 7KLV PHOOLÁXRXV SKUDVH FKD racterizes a philosophy of freedom when it comes to clothing construction… as well as presentation style and marketing strategy.” Dolores Slowinski, “Fashion is not Art,” Detroit Metro Times, February 2008.
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As the fashion industry was being turned upside down by the Great Recession of 2008, desperately slashing prices and cutting costs, Rei Kawakubo chose a different strategy altogether. She launched Comme des Garçons Black, a brand new recession-friendly collection that reprised the best selling styles from the brand’s archive at honest price points. It was a characteristically business-savvy move by a designer who has deftly maQDJHG WKH ÀQH OLQH EHWZHHQ FUHDWLYLW\ and commerciality. Loyal fans of the brand kept coming back to Comme des Garçons, even if times were tough and money was tight. Not all of Kawakubo’s avant-garde peers have fared as well. Despite his immense creative talent, the recession brought Yohji Yamamoto’s business to its knees, just before it was saved at the ODVW PLQXWH E\ D SULYDWH HTXLW\ LQYHVWRU On the other end of the spectrum, IDVKLRQ JHQLXV 0DUWLQ 0DUJLHOD TXLHWO\ left his eponymous label when its owner, Staff International, began the crass commercialisation which served to alienate 000
Margiela’s core cult customer base, even if it managed to grow the business’ top line revenues. So what’s the secret to Comme des Garçons’ success? Kawakubo has been discreetly building a multi-brand fashion business, all under the Comme des Garçons banner. From the runway collection to Comme des Garçons Black to Play Comme des Garçons, a healthy fragrance business including collaborations with Daphne *XLQQHVVDQG6WHSKHQ-RQHVDVZHOORQ JRLQJ &G* ODEHOV IRU -XQ\D :DWDQDEH Fumito Ganryu and Tao Kurihara, there is plenty of choice for all types of consumers. And all of it offers a special piece of that Comme des Garçons spirit, unadulterated. In short, Kawakubo has maintained her fashion integrity, while building an enviable global fashion business as well. Kawakubo once told Suzy Menkes, “It is true to say that I ‘design’ the company, not just clothes. Creation does not end with just the clothes. New interesting business ideas, revolutionary retail strategies, unexpected collaborations, nurturing of in-house talent, all are examples of Comme des Garçons’ creation.” Perhaps this is the most important point of all. Rather than seeing businessthinking as a blight on the face of her conceptual approach to fashion, she views it as central to her creative process. IMRAN AMED, Founder and Editor in Chief, The Business of Fashion, for 032c
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“If as Andy Warhol proposed, ‘Business art is the step after art,’ Comme des
Garçons is its fashion manifestation. Kawakubo is a fascinating anomaly, since her artistic practice remains legible and assertive, even in the context of its uncompromised commercial intent. The disparate parts of her business – the arFKLWHFWXUHDQGÀ[WXUHVRIKHUVKRSVWKH typography of her graphic programs, the VLWLQJ RI KHU ERXWLTXHV WKH FROODERUD tion with artists, photographers, musicians, and architects, the selection of her employees, the unconventional models in her runway presentations and their hair and make-up, even her terse epigrammatic responses in interviews – comprise DXQLÀHGSURMHFWµ Harold Koda, “Rei Kawakubo and the Art of Fashion,” Refusing Fashion exhibition catalogue, MOCAD 2008.
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As Sonya Park, a stylist in Tokyo who knows Kawakubo well, said recently, ´6KH PDNHV KHU SURÀW VR WKDW VKH FDQ do something new the next season. It’s always about the next project.” Cathy Horyn, “Gang of Four,” The New York Times, February 24, 2008.
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CELEBRATION “I went to the Comme des Garçons shop in Aoyama to see if there was a dress I could wear for the Pritzker ceremony. And I asked one of the store salesperson if there was anything good to wear for the ceremony. He kindly informed that to Kawakubo-san, and Kawakubo-san suggested to make something special for WKH VSHFLDO RFFDVLRQ 6KH ÀUVW VKRZHG me some dresses from last collection
COLLABORATION “Not that she ever approaches such a project as a brainstorming or a meeting of the minds. It’s more the case of a willful designer making a strong proposition with a partner who brings something new to the table, like production knowhow or distribution muscle.” Miles Socha, “Comme and Go,” W, September 2008.
Pritzker Architecture Prize ceremony, Ellis Island, New York, May 17, 2010
and they were all so beautiful. She gave me some advice on which dress would look good on me. Kawakubo-san made some DGMXVWPHQWV WR ÀW WR P\ ERG\ DQG made it very special. It was such an honor for me to wear that dress at the Pritzker ceremony. I received so many compliments from many people at the ceremony for the dress!” 6(-,0$.$=8<2SULQFLSDO6$1$$WR032c. Interview by Vicente Gutierrez.
CHAMPIONS Ten world records were broken by the U.S. men’s swimming team during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. All were achieved LQVXLWVIURPWKH6SHHGR/=55DFHUOLQH with graphics by Comme des Garçons. “The suit was developed in association with the Australian Institute of Sport. NASA’s wind tunnel testing facilities, DQG $QV\V ÁXLG ÁRZ DQDO\VLV VRIWZDUH supported the design.” (wikipedia.org)
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In the playful rulebook of the house of Comme des Garçons, collaboration has always been a cortex for the company’s inner sapience and variously articulated modi operandi. Rarely logical, these mutual efforts go beyond even their own expected aesthetic promises, issuing forth precise branding statements, and opening new outlets for the label’s continuous expansion – not to mention the added value they also give to guest crusaders. For more than 40 years, the company has elaborated a myriad of surprising and unexpected collaborative threads that few art or fashion historians could VXIÀFLHQWO\ GRFXPHQW 8QOHDVKHG IURP an understanding of market-trend value, but also somehow solely guided by Rei Kawakubo’s progressionist love of all things cultural, artistic, and emotional, Comme’s collaborations are rarely executed at the behest of others (you never UHTXHVW\RXDUHDOZD\VLQYLWHG²VRPH how mirroring the pyramidal structure of the company itself). Still and all, the list is endless … There’s photography (Cindy Sherman, Daido Moriyama, Collier Schorr …); sculpture and installation (Fischli/Weiss, Roman Signer, Felix Gonzales-Torres…); advertisement (pretty much all of the previously mentioned above and below!); set design *DU\&DUG-DQGH&RFk …);
dance (Merce Cunningham with Scenario [1997]); music (Seigen Ono, Arto Lindsay…); architecture (among many, a recent project is Kazuyo Sejima [of SAANA] for Comme des Garçons [2009]); media (Visionaire 20 [1997], a “visual interview” with Kawakubo DV WKH SXEOLFDWLRQ·V ÀUVW JXHVW HGLWRU Vogue Nippon X Comme des Garçons Tokyo shop, featuring Chanel [2009]; A Magazine Curated by Jun Takahashi Undercover [2006]; Werk No. 10 in collaboration with Colette [2004]…); product and retail partnerships (Comme des Garçons X THE BEATLES with Apple Corps Ltd. [2009], Milan’s 10 Corso Como replica in Tokyo, Colette meets Comme des Garçons, the “Paris – Tokyo Speedconnexion,” H&M, Louis Vuitton…); creative direction (Christian Astuguevielle, the Comme des Garçons PARFUMS creative director since 1992; advertising conception with art director Tsugaya Inoue … DQGWXWWLTXDQWi… Not only do Comme’s collaborations span many enthusiastically welcomed and established bodies of work in contemporary art and retail; they also include slightly unknown practices that seem to incarnate Kawakubo’s more personal fascinations. Illustrator Filip Pagowski created the PLAY CDG logo, and the highly-celebrated, successful commercial line has gone on to collaborate with many more illustrators and patternmakers. Kawakubo’s interest in documenting ethnic identities led to Brian Giffin’s photography of young Georgian women dressed in CDG in the birth village of the late primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918). Unearthing the work of female artists, both past and present, is also a mark of Comme and Kawakubo, and includes
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D MRLQW HIIRUW ZLWK RQH RI WKH ÀUVW JLOG bronze costume jewelry designers, Line 9DXWULQ ² DVZHOODVDQKR mage to the French photographer and writer Claude Cahun (1894–1954). In 1992, Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu created installations for Comme stores in Tokyo, Paris, and New York. In 1988, Kawakubo launched her ÀUVW stunt effort in print, Six magazine, which pushed the frontiers of art and fashion photography to spectacular results. The publication showcased extensive portfolios by leading photographers such as Peter Lindbergh, Paolo Roversi, Steven Meisel, and 7LPRWK\ *UHHQÀHOG Sanders, as well as multiple portraits and images by and of artists and designers, including Louise Nevelson, -DPHV /HH Byars, Gilbert & George, Azzedine Alaïa… As an ongoing extension of Six – and not even to mention CDG PAPER, which is distributed to the company’s staff worldwide – the house’s direct mailings always incorporate the power of art and visual culture. In 1994, Kawakubo wished Happy New Year to her merry followers with an image extract the Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Parajanov’s ÀOPThe Color of Pomegranates. An extension of the Mail art movement that originated in WKH V" 3RWHQWLDOO\ %XW GHÀQLWHO\ a recurrent statement of the brand’s philosophy as a global communication vector. And let us not forget the house’s IHOORZ GHVLJQHUV -XQ\D :DWDQDEH 7DR Kurihara, Ganryu, and, to an extent, the “prodigal son,” UNDERCOVER’s -XQ 7DNDKDVKL DUH IUHHO\ H[SUHVVLQJ their personal vision through multiple labels inside CDG, as well as through retail. It starts and ends by being solely about mutual understanding and support, through which Comme des Garçons’ global label extends as a thinking method into a media of savoir-faire. This generosity brings not only economic power, but also new platforms of expression and diffusion to the label’s invited participants. 000
It’s all done for the simple love-value of the good, and for what simply has to be done. What is seen through and depicted in the eyes of Rei Kawakubo is cultural essor, and her edifying will to achieve is by now collective legacy. CYRIL DUVAL (Item Idem) for 032c
“For me there’s no compromise, I do what I want, and they do whatever I couldn’t do myself.” Rei Kawakubo, W, September 2008.
COLOR ,Q -DSDQ .DZDNXER·V HDUO\ IROORZHUV dressed in head-to-toe BLACK, were popularly known as “the crows.” In March 1988, Kawakubo resolutely declared: RED is black. She illustrated her point with a standout collection (A/W 1988) full of virulent red. “Only someone such as Kawakubo, who has reached the deepest understanding of monotone, has such a feeling for colour and can create such a brilliant red.” Seiichi Minzuno in Deyan Sudjic, Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons, 1990.
For the 7th issue of 032c, “At War With the Obvious” (Summer 2004), Kawakubo contributed five variations of BLUE based on the Pantone color code system. No text accompanied the plates.
“The colour GOLD reminds her of “Dubai, of the Vatican and of teapots.” Susannah Frankel, “Rei,” Another Magazine #18, Spring/Summer 2010.
“Throughout the 1980s, Kawakubo’s color palette was dominated by white, gray, and black, plus beige and navy. The theme of ‘darkness’ was omnipresent in her creations. Along with Yohji Yamamoto, she made black fashionable… Kawakubo’s use of black in the 1980s ZDVVRLQÁXHQWLDOWKDWVKHLVVWLOODVVRFLD ted with the color. However, since she launched her red Autumn/Winter 1988 collection, black has nearly disappeared from her work. Moreover, Kawakubo’s color choices and combinations are at once radical and harmonious; she seems to have established her own chromatic sensibility. Kawakubo returns to black periodically. For her, black may not be just achromatic, but a ‘color’ in its own right.” Fashion in Colors exhibition catalogue, Cooper Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian, New York 2006.
CREATION “At Comme des Garçons, everything is connected by creation: clothing design, graphic design, interior design, business strategy, marketing. All these have their own causes and effects, and to bring them all together as one force, one image, is LQWHUHVWLQJEXWYHU\GLIÀFXOWµ Rei Kawakubo in Menkes, 2009.
When we met in the 80s, that was a time when fashion distinguished itself with its creative muscle and while that’s diminished now, Rei remains an exception and a tour de force season after season. With Rei, she is all about the work, in the way that Michelangelo wouldn’t take his shoes off when he slept because he felt that time could be better spent painting - she’s in the same mold. GENE KRELL, Fashion Director, Vogue and GQ Japan, to 032c. Interview by Vicente Gutierrez.
with holes used to decorative effect: such clothes cannot be discussed in conventional fashion terms.” -HVVLFD*ODVVFRFN´%ULGJLQJWKH$UW&RPPHUFH Divide,” Grey Gazette H[KLELWLRQERRNOHW 9RO No. 1, New York University, November 1999.
“Ragged seams become ruffles. Yards DQG \DUGV RI UXIÁHV 5XIÁHV DSSHDU LQ unexpected places poking out of seams. Holes in sweaters become gashes in the ERGLFHV RI HYHQLQJ GUHVVHV -DFNHWV DUH dismantled and turned inside-out or put together in new ways. The inside of a cardigan becomes the outside with the bumpy texture of knitted roses close to the body. Or perhaps it is the other way around. One never knows.” Brooke Hodge, “On the Work of Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons”, Harvard University GSD, May 2000.
“I really felt that I was on my own. I never felt my work had anything to do with being a woman. I am not a feminist. I was never interested in any movement as such. I just decided to make a company built around creation, and with creation as my sword, I FRXOGÀJKWWKHEDWWOHV,ZDQWHGWRÀJKWµ Rei Kawakubo in Lee Carter, “Connect the Dots,” T Magazine, August 28, 2005.
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DESIGN “In the Comme des Garçons fashion collections, Kawakubo has offered shirts with extra sleeves and neck holes, jackets cut to be misbuttoned, skirts and dresses with wildly irregular hemlines, jackets with slits up the length of the sleeve, jackets bearing only one shoulder, clothing with exposed seams, or asymmetrical padding in unconventional places, and knitwear
DOVER STREET MARKET “Instead of setting up on the typical luxury shopping boulevards in London – the Kings Road, Bond Street and Mount Street – Kawakubo chose a corporate RIÀFHVSDFHRQDIRUJRWWHQVWUHHWLQ/RQ don’s Mayfair district, which must have been much cheaper. Since her arrival, other brands have followed suit and, Dover Street is now home to London ÁDJVKLSV IRU $FQH $3& DQG 9DQHVVD Bruno.” IMRAN AMED for 032c.
DESTRUCTION Kawakubo titled an all-black collection from 1982 “Destroy”. It has become legendary. “The cloth scars in the form of cuts, and the healing process in that of seams, bandages, belts and zippers … The silhouettes are tenderly presented and thus hide the vehemence of the intrusions that Rei Kawakubo makes on the normal way of tailoring dresses and suits … No one can destroy his own work more beDXWLIXOO\WKDQWKH-DSDQHVHGHVLJQHUµ Ulf Poschardt, “On the Nature of Destruction,” 032c #2, Summer 2001.
“The recent frenzied spate of museum building has seen unfortunate comparisons made between these cultural institutions and shopping malls. But I love malls the way I love museums. Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo’s Dover Street Market is rightly being described as the ultimate mall. Everything she thinks you should want is spread out over VL[ÁRRUV,WLVWKHPRVWVXEOLPHVHQVXDO shopping experience, carefully curated WR LQFOXGH DQ $]]HGLQH $ODwD ERXWLTXH a dozen Comme lines, and Terry de Havilland shoes. Dover Street is not the perfect mall; it is actually the perfect museum.” Thelma Golden, Director, The Studio Museum in +DUOHP´%HVWRI FULWLFVFXUDWRUVORRNDW the year in art,”Artforum December 2004.
“I want to create a kind of market where YDULRXV FUHDWRUV IURP YDULRXV ÀHOGV JD ther together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos: the mixing up and coming together of different kindred souls who all share a strong personal vision.” Rei Kawakubo, www.doverstreetmarket.com 000
DISSENT
“The majority is always wrong” Henrik Ibsen, “An Enemy of the People.” Printed on fabrics for Comme des Garçons men’s Fall 2003 collection.
E ESSENCE
“Rei’s clothes have that weird mixture of -DSDQHVHPLQLPDOLVPDQGQLKLOLVPDQG Walt Disney” Nick Knight, “Rei,” Another Magazine #18, Spring/Summer 2010.
EVERGREEN CDG Homme Plus subline introduced in 2005, since discontinued, consisting of favorite items from past collections that have been re-issued with slight design alterations “I have one of these, trust me, they’re worth it! Their polyester fabric is very nice and comfortable and they do so many things with it, do it in a crisp twill, do a warped/wrinkled treatment, etc. I NEVER thought I would ever want to own anything polyester but I was suprised how much I like their synthetic pieces.” posted by brian_w In response to “$1,000 for a polyester jacket? I’m trying really hard to swallow this …” Posted by birdofparadise on The Fashion Spot online community, “evergreen” thread. 000
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FOUNTAINHEAD ´2QH FDQQRW ÀJKW WKH EDWWOH ZLWKRXW IUHHGRP,WKLQNWKHEHVWZD\WRÀQGWKDW EDWWOHZKLFKHTXDOVWKHXQ\LHOGLQJVSLULW is in the realm of creation. That’s exactly ZK\IUHHGRPDQGWKHVSLULWRIGHÀDQFHis the source of my energy.” Rei Kawakubu in Frankel, 2010.
FRAGANCE 6LQFHODXQFKLQJLWVÀUVWHSRQ\PRXVSHU fume in 1994, Comme des Garçons has VWHDGLO\ GHYHORSHG D VPDOO EXW VLJQLÀ cant line of innovative fragrances, many of them unisex. Over the years they have included such critically acclaimed and commercially successful scents as Comme des Garçons 2 and, most reFHQWO\ :RQGHUZRRG 2GHXU WKH EUDQG·V ÀUVW ´DQWLSHUIXPHµ ZLWK FHOOX lose and burnt rubber among other un conventional notes, was released in 1998 to mixed reviews. ´2'(85 (Comme des Garçons)*** woody soapy Historically important but artistically unsatisfying, this fragrance started as a minimalist one-line concept-art school of perfumery that has so far proved only a moderately good idea. This one was intended to smell clean and does that a million times better than the fragrances from the “Clean” brand which just smell YLOH %XW LW EHJV WKH HWHUQDO TXHVWLRQ pour-quoi pas rien?” Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, Perfumes: The Guide, Viking, 2008.
FREEDOM
“Feeling free inside oneself is being free.” Rei Kawakubo, Interview Magazine, November 2008.
FUN “I duly asked her what she laughs at, and she answered deadpan, ‘People falling down.’” Thurman, 2005.
FURNITURE .DZDNXER KDV GHVLJQHG ÀYH FROOHFWLRQV RIIXUQLWXUH´&KDLU1RµIURP was not characterized by comfort.
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GATEWAY Of all Comme des Garçons products, the classic zippered wallet is perhaps the single most sought-after item, even by people who know little else about the brand. GONZALEZ-TORRES, FELIX Candy Pieces by the Cuban-born artist was shown at the Aoyama store in May of 1998.
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LQQLQH86FLWLHVZLWKKHURZQERXWLTXH in Manhattan’s breathlessly fashionable SoHo district.’ ´-DSDQ·V6WUDYLQVN\RI)DVKLRQ5RFNVWKH World with her Atonal, Assymetric Sad Rags,” People Weekly'HFHPEHU
HISTORY “Ms. Kawakubo, 66, is one of the great fashion forces from the last decades of the 20th century to now.“ Menkes, 2009.
RK: I don’t remember exactly. I know I wanted something long, something with a ring to it. One of the people working with me said, “How about ‘Comme des Garçons?’” And I thought, “Why not?” EK: Your own name has a ring to it.
RK: I didn’t think of myself as a designer. It was a business, a group of people working together. I wanted a name that would represent the whole group.
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´,Q IDVKLRQ LW ZDV WKH \HDU RI WKH -D panese. And no one in that ultrasensitive land, where every stitch can set RII DQ HDUWKTXDNH UDWWOHG PRUH VDNH cups than Rei Kawakubo – not even her talented compatriots Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. From Paris to Tokyo her followers are striding about in Kawakubo’s mournful, strangely cut garments, black socks and rubber shoes. Rei’s critics hold the 41-year-old designer responsible for perpetrating a formless, asexual look. ‘Her clothes don’t touch or mold the body,’ complains traditionalist French designer Sonia Rykiel. ‘There’s a lack of softness.’ But Rei’s supporters credit her with some of the most startling DQG LQÁXHQWLDO GHVLJQV RXW RI -DSDQ WR day. ‘Rei is an original,’ says Bendel 9LFH3UHVLGHQW-HDQ5RVHQEHUJ¶6KHLVD master of intricate cuts.” Kawakubo, the PRVWUDGLFDORIWKHQHZZDYHRI-DSDQHVH designers, pronounces Western skintight JDUPHQWV¶TXLWHERULQJ·DGGLQJ¶,GHVLJQ for women who are beyond that.’ What sort of woman? ‘The bag lady of New York,’ Kawakubo replied fliply when asked by Women’s Wear Daily. “Rei’s now historic advance on the West took place only two years ago. Her ÀUVWVKRZLQ3DULVFDXVHGRQHRIWKHELJ gest furores since Stravinsky introduced The Rite of Spring. Like Stravinsky, Rei coolly mocked conventions – shredding and poking holes in skirts, tops and dresses. In the US, where her clothes still EDIÁH WKH XQLQLWLDWHG H\H 5HL·V VXFFHVV is growing rapidly. She now has outposts
EK: How did you decide on the name Comme des Garçons?
Elsa Klensch, “Another World of Style … Rei Kawakubo,” Vogue (New York), August 1987.
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Elsa Klensch: When did you first become interested in fashion?
Rei Kawakubo: When I was about 24. I’d been working in the adverstising department of a textile company, and I was asked to style the print ads and TV commercials. I liked the work so much that after two years I decided to leave the ÀUPDQGZRUNDVDIUHHODQFHVW\OLVW EK: Later, when you decide to become a designer, was it because you couldn’t find clothes you thought were right for your work?
RK: It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t ÀQG WKH NLQGV RI FORWKHV , ZDQWHG , was frustrated by the way we chose the clothes. EK: When and how did you get started?
RK: In about 1969 I rented a room that was part of a Tokyo graphics design studio and set up with two assistants. EK: What sort of clothes did you produce?
RK: Clothes I felt were modern and new. But they were commercial as well; I was in business, and I had to support myself.
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KARI RITTENBACH: For a designer – or rather, aesthete – whose otherworldly ascent in fashion is accounted for by QR OHVV D FUHDWLRQ P\WK WKDQ WKH ÁDWWHVW plateau of “starting from zero” (the uncouth postwar epithet “Hiroshima’s Revenge” attended CDG’s earliest presentations), it is certainly apposite to examine how Kawakubo allows herself to be historicized after the fact. A deconstructivist with a paradoxically tightlycontrolled image, Kawakubo toys with cultural and historical references as adroitly, or as murkily, as the most prodigious Postmodernist – and in so doing has fashioned a history all her own. But what came before the legend? What was the reception to early Comme des *DUoRQV LQ -DSDQ OLNH GXULQJ WKH VH venties? (Kawakubo began producing clothing for CdG as early as 1969.) Does much clothing from this early period still exist? In her New Yorker SURÀOH RI .DZDNXERZULWHU-XGLWK7KXUPDQLVEHVW able to describe these pieces as possibly featuring “denim apron skirts.” 000
AKIKO FUKAI: For Kawakubo, the Seventies were, I could say, her training or trial period. She was well known among professionals, such as stylists, fashion journalists and buyers, who considered her a very talented new type of designer. In fact, we have just a few items of clothing from her earlier period. They are as Thurman described, and based mainly RQ´EDVLFµGDLO\FORWKHVVXFKDV-DSDQ ese traditional farmer’s clothes made of ´$L]RPHµ -DSDQHVH LQGLJR G\H WH[WLOHV or denim) and men’s tailored suits. They are baggy without holes and tiers – yet a ÁDLUIRUDQHZHUDFDQEHGLVFHUQHGLQKHU clothing. What was women’s sportswear or streetwear like in the 1960s before Kawakubo?
So-called American sportswear had DOUHDG\ EHHQ WUDQVODWHG LQWR -DSDQHVH women’s wardrobes in the 1960s. The -DSDQHVHDSSDUHOLQGXVWU\KDGGHYHORSHG enormously by learning the American ready–to-wear fashions around that time.
The Lunar lamp by Konstantin Grcic illuminates Comme des Garçons in Aoyama.
Was it more difficult for Kawakubo to control the presentation of her apparel as a young designer? (Which might necessarily have encouraged her to show in Paris?)
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No, it was not. After having established her own company in 1969, she SUHVHQWHG KHU ÀUVW VKRZ LQ 7RN\R LQ DQG RSHQHG KHU ERXWLTXH DW WKH VDPH\HDU ,UHPHPEHUYHU\ZHOOKHUÀUVW ERXWLTXH ,W ZDV ORFDWHG RQ WKH VHFRQG ÁRRU RI D EXLOGLQJ LQ 0LQDPL$R\DPD Tokyo and was discreet without a too QLFH ZHOFRPLQJIHHOLQJ EXW ÀOOHG ZLWK D stimulating atmosphere.) Anyway, she debuted in Paris. It was unavoidable for her to present her works in Paris, the only place where her works might be judged properly, whether positively or negatively. Kawakubo is a virtuoso of contradiction. The title of her women’s line is French for “like boys,” yet for all of her androgynous
apparel, she has been careful to resist being labeled a feminist. Kawakubo also established herself squarely in an industry dominated by men. How were her early accomplishments viewed in Japan, and has it had any affect on gender politics in fashion there since?
and strong expression, through the dynamic volume of form, intricateness of construction and devotion to black in her clothing.
,Q -DSDQ EHIRUH KHU WKHUH ZHUH DO ready several female fashion designers who had met with success in the business. For example, Hanae Mori was received as a member of Paris Haute Couture in 1978. The naming of her brand CdG is not related to feminism but more to the attitude that Kawkubo does not compromise on conventionality. She said, ”I try to create clothes by breaking away from the clothes (or thinking) that already exist” (“Deconstruction and Elegance,” interview by Akiko Fukai, Dresstudy 9RO >)DOO @ 7KHUHIRUH her accomplishment had little affect on gender politics in fashion. In any case, -DSDQHVH IHPLQLVWV GLGQ·W SD\ VR PXFK attention to fashion.
Kawaii (Kawaii contains a feeling DNLQ WR -DSDQHVH YHUVLRQ RI IHPLQLQLW\ At the same time, the label’s very edgy DQGDUWLVWLFTXDOLW\
Do you consider Kawakubo’s quasifeminism, then, to be reflected in her designs for women, which drape and abstract the female body rather than reveal or sensualize it? Or is the “style” of Comme des Garçons apparel simply more culturally amenable to the domestic consumer? In other words, is her treatment of the body considered radical in Japan?
As I mentioned before, she is not a feminist. Therefore I think it would be incorrect if we read her designs in the FRQWH[WRIIHPLQLVP+HUGHVLJQUHÁHFWV WKHLQGLJHQRXVQRWLRQRI-DSDQHVHFORWK ing (the kimono, for example) that it is not necessary to obey the body’s form, in contrast to the Western notion that clothes should obey the body’s form; in other words, clothing has the autonomy. ,QWKH-DSDQHVHWUDGLWLRQFORWKLQJWHQGHG to conceal the body line rather than reveal it. Therefore Kawakubo’s treatment of WKHERG\GLGQRWVKRFN-DSDQHVHSHRSOH But what shocked them was her fervent
What is most appealing about Comme des Garçons to the domestic consumer?
In a 1983 interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Kawakubo insisted: “I’m not very happy to be classified as another Japanese designer. There is no one characteristic that all Japanese designers have.” How do you respond to this statement, today?
I agree with what she said. She can be FODVVLÀHG E\ KHU RZQ FKDUDFWHULVWLFV EXW QRW DV SDUWLFXODUO\ -DSDQHVH +RZHYHU I am sure that any creators – whether designers or artists – can’t escape from WKH LQIOXHQFH RI =HLWJHLVW RQ WKHLU works; the circumstances, the time, and of course the culture. What do you consider Kawakubo’s relationship to history? Would it be wrong to question the veracity of her claiming a starting point of conceptual “absolute zero”? That later Comme des Garçons collections have riffed on countless historical references (Magritte’s The Red Model of 1935 or designs by Elsa Schiaparelli, for example) certainly indicates that fashion and art history – and not only contemporary culture, high or low – maintain a certain significance for her.
,QIDFWLQ .DZDNXERFXUDWHGD small fashion exhibition entitled “Essence of Quality” by mixing KCI’s historical costumes with her works in Tokyo. As she said, “I can’t create without being inspired by nothing.” She knows about art history and fashion history. But in her work, the relationship to the history is ambiguous; it is not simply revisiting the past. She catches elements of inspiration 000
with her sensitive antennae and absorbs them. Then she restores them to the level of “zero”, where her own creation starts. Western journalists have used adjectives like “esoteric,” “severe,” “tricky,” “fer vent” and “innovative” to describe Kawakubo’s influence on the world of fashion via Comme des Garçons. How have you generally described her aesthetic?
Stimulating, dynamic, strong, intricate, and new-feminine. The femininity of the new era has been created by Comme des Garçons following after Coco Chanel. New-femininity looks sometimes androgynous; it is not determined by men’s eyes. AKIKO FUKAI, Chief Curator, The Kyoto Costume Institute, to 032c. The KCI holds a total of 1500 CdG pieces from the early 1980s to today. Interview by Kari Rittenbach.
HOME Kawakubo owns an apartment in a modern tower on the edge of a cemetery, not far from Comme des Garçons’ headTXDUWHUVDQGWKUHHVWRUHVLQ$R\DPD7KH apartment’s precise location is a secret. HONORIS In 2000 Kawakubo was awarded the “Excellence in Design Award” from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
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IDENTITY “I came across Comme des Garçons in the early 1980s, a season or two after 5HL .DZDNXER ÀUVW VKRZHG LQ 3DULV $W the time I was a trainee journalist with no money and still dressed by customising jumble sale bargains. But as soon as I could afford to, I started buying a piece from 000
Comme each season. Fashion was much more politicised then, because feminism was so important. What you wore said so much about your own identity, and how you wanted to represent your gender. Comme was the perfect solution. Swathing yourself in those black folds felt super chic, super uncompromising, super radical and super feminist – like ZDYLQJDYHU\HOHJDQWWZRÀQJHUHGVDOXWH at the establishment.” Alice Rawsthorn, “Rei,” Another Magazine #18, Spring/Summer 2010.
INFORMATION “What is important to me is information (in the journalistic sense of relating news.) Through my collections, other product projects and through my graphic work, or by collaborating with artists and photographers, I like to tell a story. :LWKRXWQHZVQRWKLQJLVDOLYH7KHÀQDO result of everything must say something. Information deepens the work. So, if anything, I am maybe more of a journalist than an artist!”
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Rei Kawakubo in Menkes, 2009.
JOFFE, ADRIAN Married to Rei Kawakubo since 1992, the South African is the president of Comme des Garçons International. He is the company’s main spokesperson and Kawakubo’s chief interpreter.
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“It was Hiroshi Matsushita who devised the rayon criss-crossed with elastic that allowed Kawakubo to make the garments in the women’s collection of 1984 bubble and boil as though they were melting. And it was Matsushita who formulated the bonded cotton rayon and polyurethane fabric Kawakubo used for her asymmetric dresses of 1986 … For Matsushita, the distinctive character of a Comme des Garçons garment can be traced back to the thread that will be used to weave the fabric from which the collection will be made.” “Once she gave us a piece of crumpled paper and sad she wanted a pattern for a garment that would have VRPHWKLQJ RI WKDW TXDOLW\ $QRWKHU WLPH she didn’t produce anything, but talked about a pattern for a coat that would KDYH WKH TXDOLWLHV RI D SLOORZFDVH WKDW was in the process of being pulled inside out. She didn’t want that exact shape, of course, but the essence is that moment of transition, of half inside, half out.”
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2 KISS Models in the Comme des Garçons women’s Fall 2009 collection wore tulle masks embroidered ZLWKUHGVHTXLQVLQWKHIRUPRIDOLSVPXGJH
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LOVELY Kawakubo has said she starts out by giving form to ideas she considers “lovely” or “smart”.
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MATERIALS “Over the years the designer has also incorporated textiles thought to be cheap, ostentatious, cute, vulgar, or kitsch, and repositioned them in the aesthetic hierarchy.” Koda, 2008.
Sudjic, 1990.
MEMORY, erased “Continuity of tradition and history is present in varying degrees in all cultures, but learning to forget these rather than inheriting them is far from easy. In place of ‘forgetting’, we could substitute the words ‘destruction’ and ‘rebirth’. This is because in order to create a new memory, ZHPXVWÀUVWHUDVHWKHROGPHPRU\2QH of only a handful of examples where the mechanism of destruction and rebirth has been adopted in the context of handing down a tradition is the shikinen sengu ceremony at the Ise Shrine, according to which the shrine is completely dismantled and rebuilt every 20 years. The meticulousness with which this renewal ceremony is observed, which means that not only the buildings but everything down to the artefacts inside the buildings are replaced, results in the crystallization both of the skills of the craftsmen involved and of the time in which they act. A certain purity is also achieved as a result of this
process. The old and the new appear to be the same, but because the cells themselves have been replaced, strictly speaking they are different entities. The primal spirit in the form of the object of worship housed inside is embodied in the design of the shrine. “A shrine that remains forever 20 years old or less could be thought of as an analogy for someone who rejects maturity beyond childhood and is reborn over and over again in order never to attain adulthood. This isn’t the same as HTXDWLQJ JURZWK ZLWK WKH UHMHFWLRQ RI development, but entails forgetting by denying one after another the things that accumulate inside one. The only things allowed to accumulate would be practical skills and pure technology. As soon as one declares oneself an heir to, or destroyer of, history or tradition, one begins to age towards ‘adulthood’. “A feature of the work produced by these creators, who could almost be described as ‘Ise Shrine-like’, is that they help extinguish and regenerate the cells
and contaminated memory neurons of the people who set eyes on them. Kawakubo Rei and Sejima Kazuyo, whom I rate as two of the greatest creators alive today, both fall into this ‘cell regeneration’ category.” Hasegawa Yuko, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, “The Art of Forgetting,” Art iT Magazine, Fall/Winter 2006.
MODERNISM Kawakubo has always functioned as a modernist. Her fashion is serious, singular, sensitive, full of energy and it always makes impertinent demands on our feelings. She works only for the satisfaction of her own ideas, season after season. She has used the skills of her patternmakers in Tokyo to attack and explore a variety of human conditions, including randomness, unreality, our literal and metaphorical burdens, and our complex ideas about eroticism and beauty. She makes us see these things in her fashion. CATHY HORYN, fashion critic of The New York Times, for 032c 000
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“I want to design clothes that have never yet existed”
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Rei Kawakubo in Koda, 2008.
OFFICE ´7KH ÀUVW WKLQJ \RX VKRXOG NQRZ DERXW WKH&RPPHGHV*DUoRQVKHDGTXDUWHUVLV WKDWLWRFFXSLHVÀYHÁRRUVRIDQRUGLQDU\ RIÀFHEXLOGLQJRQDEXV\URDGHDFKÁRRU as drably functional as the next. Nothing to reveal here except its nothingness. There is no receptionist to greet you or to direct you to the appropriate floor. This would only be a problem if you were actually expected at Comme des Garçons, but very few people are welcomed there, and that also applies to family members. ‘’No husbands, boyfriends, wives, daughters – never,’ said -RIIH :KLFK EULQJV XV WR WKH VHFRQG thing you should know about Comme des Garçons: it’s a very secretive place.” Cathy Horyn, “Gang of Four”, The New York Times, February 24, 2008 000
PATTERN Design assistants at Comme des Garçons are patterners, and as patterners they must develop a feel not only for shape and texture but also, more tryingly, for what Kawakubo is feeling at the start of a collection, whether she is ‘’happy’’ or ‘’angry,’’ sentiments she rarely communicates in any detail. As she once explained, ‘’At the start, I am not exactly certain what I am thinking myself. It is guesswork with us.’’ What Kawakubo hopes to achieve from this open process is that the patterners will think more intuitively and come up with things that will surprise her. Horyn, 2008.
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“When she uses these abilities as a springboard to think freely and radically, patterns from the basis of her work. ‘Patterns are design. Designing actually begins with patterns.’ The concept is conveyed to the pattern makers using simple drawings and the nuances of language. Each person’s interpretation comes back to Kawakubo, and an exchange develops from there. Something made once is never made D VHFRQG WLPH 7KLV XQHTXLYRFDO VWDWH ment of intent was made clear at Comme des Garçons for Comme des Garçons 4, a show for Comme des Garçons employees put together in September at WKH FRPSDQ\·V KHDG RIÀFH 3DWWHUQV IRU JDUPHQWV WKDW KDG SUHYLRXVO\ EHHQ produced were displayed in the form of bold, black graphics in a space whose ÁRRUZDOOVDQGFHLOLQJKDGEHHQSDLQWHG white. Each pattern had been made into a garment using neutral sheeting and GLVSOD\HG RQ D PDQQHTXLQ WRUVR SODFHG next to the corresponding pattern. Set against a stark white background in
Hasegawa Yuko, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary art, Tokyo, “The Art of Forgetting,” art iT Magazine, Fall/Winter 2006.
Juergen Teller, Kate Moss wears Comme des Garçons F/W 2000
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a style reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s dance step paintings, the bold graphics seemed to borrow heavily from the pop/conceptual art form. Combined with the almost unbelievable variation of the forms standing like monotone statues in the spaces between the graphics, this resulted in a show that was extremely sophisticated and powerful. But there was no so-called message or ideological theme there. The entire show consisted of displays of patterns, which take shape only after a process in which Kawakubo gropes around in an effort to come up with forms, relying for guidance on the most primal aspect of her work – the images in her head – and of the three-dimensional entities to which these two-dimensional patterns had given rise. This approach of pursuing to an extreme the autonomy of the garment rather than fitting it to the body finds its ultimate expression in the bold pattern experiments and endless studies of the pattern makers. Because the actual form of the pattern is not bound by any conventions such as having to cut along the grain of the fabric, the garment develops a shape all of its own. This puts the onus on the person wearing a Comme des Garçons garment in the sense that it tests their ability to make the clothes look good on them. The overall image depends on the experimentation with the form and the development of the patterns rather than the production of the three-dimensional garments on which they are based. For example, when one sees ‘Ultra-simple’ (October 1992), which despite the garments themselves being varied and comSOH[ LQ WKH H[WUHPH LV D TXHVW E\ WKH designer to see how many clothes can be made using a minimum of patterns, one realizes that Kawakubo’s concept image is not found on the surface of the clothing, but at deeper level.”
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PEERLESSNESS There are few women who have exerted PRUHLQÁXHQFHRQWKHKLVWRU\RIPRGHUQ fashion, and the most obvious, Chanel, is in some respect her perfect foil: the racy courtesan who invented a uniform of irreproachable chic and the gnomic shaman whose anarchic chic is reproach to uniformity. They both started from an egalitarian premise: that a woman should derive from her clothes the ease and FRQÀGHQFHWKDWDPDQGRHV%XW&KDQHO formulated a few simple and lucrative principles, from which she never wavered, that changed the way women wanted to dress, while Kawakubo, who reinvents the wheel – or tries to – every season, changed the way one thinks about what a dress is.” Thurman, 2005.
PHOTOGRAPHY “It was a Harper’s Bazaar layout that precipitated (Cindy Sherman’s) collaboration with Kawakubo. After seeing that layout LQ .DZDNXER FRQWDFWHG 6KHUPDQ and provided her with clothing from each of the Comme des Garçons collections, to be photographed however Sherman wished. The resulting images were then used in the direct-mail campaign for the Comme des Garçons autumn/winter 1994–95 collections and also displayed LQ WKH FRPSDQ\·V 6R+R ERXWLTXH 7KHVH
photographs are less depictions of saleable product than challenges to the expectation of what a fashion photograph should be, breaking virtually every rule of fashion photography. As philosopher Roland Barthes has observed, fashion photography is generally governed by a garment-photographcaption formulation, an apt description that cannot, however, be applied to Shermans interpretation of Comme des Garçons clothes. Her photographs cenWHU RQ GLVMRLQWHG PDQQHTXLQV DQG EL zarre characters, forcing the clothing itself into the background. The lithe, physically ideal fashion model, so integral to the pages of Vogue, Glamour, and Elle, is nowhere to be seen. In her place are a menagerie of confrontationally unpretty surrogates, like the garishly PDGHXSPDQQHTXLQLQ6KHUPDQ·V Untitled (#302). In the context of Kawakubo’s destabilizing approach to the established way of doing business in the fashion industry, her collaboration with Sherman, whose work also undermines the reality of particular images, seems almost predestined.” Glasscock, 1999.
PLACE VENDOME, Number 16, Paris 1st Arrondisement: :RUOG+HDGTXDUWHUVRI&RPPHGHV *DUoRQVRXWVLGHRI-DSDQVLQFH PROTEGE Tao Kurihara, own line under CDG umbrella since 2005 -XQ\D:DWDQDEH, own line under CDG XPEUHOODVLQFH Fumito Ganryu, own line under CDG umbrella since 2007
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Q QUASIMODO In October of 1996, Comme des Garçons presented its collection for spring/ summer 1997, titled “Dress Meets Body”. It is the most discussed Comme des Garçons collection to date, brought up in almost every interview, text or conversation about the label and its founder. “The small invited audience sits in D VTXDUH LQ WKH Musée d’Art Afrique et d’Océanie in Paris … There is no music DQG QR FDWZDON 7KH ÀUVW PRGHO FRPHV on in a slender, white, semi-transparent dress with two little buds at the back, like nascent angels’ wings. As the show progresses each model comes out in increasingly larger and, to most commentators, odder swellings, all under ORQJ ÀWWHG GUHVVHV LQ VWUHWFK IDEULFV Some are in red, white, or blue; others in a range of ginghams: black, pale blue, pink, or red and white. All are padded, ZLWK JRRVHGRZQ ÀOOLQJV 7KH IHDWKHU pads are arranged asymmetrically; they run over a shoulder, diagonally across a hip, down the back, or coil round the torso, to form half-bustles, raised necks, or prominent backs. It is hard to ÀQG WKH ZRUGV WR GHVFULEH WKH HIIHFW RI these down pads under sheer dresses: if words fail perhaps it is because the dresses do not engage with the everyday language of the fashion body. ‘To make a form in which a woman looks pretty in a conventional way is not interesting to me at all,’ says Comme’s designer Rei Kawakubo. And it is true that she does not emphasize its conventional assets: VPDOO ZDLVW ÁDW VWRPDFK FXUYLQJ KLSV and bottom, small, high breasts. Yet neither does she deny them particularly, even when she obscures some of these
body parts. This is not a collection which engages tyrannically with fashion, and LWVUHTXLUHPHQWVWKDWWKHERG\EHKRQHG exercised, produced. It seems, instead, to be a speculation on what else the body could be, other than.” Caroline Evans, “Paris 1996,” 032c #4, :LQWHU
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“Kim Novak’s protuberances in Hitchcock’s Vertigo *RG]LOOD SRUHV SXV ÁR wering on top of pimples, Nineteenthcentury bustles and false fronts, Veronica Cartwright’s bug-eyed expression of horror in Ridley Scott’s Alien, prosthetic cocks or a ‘real’ erect one, cellulite and diagrams on how to combat it, the male/ female character in Silence Of The Lambs regarding his image in the mirror, dick tucked between his legs – all these tabulae non rasae sprang to mind as I watched models garbed in Rei Kawakubo’s Spring/Summer ’97 collection walk down the runway this fall, their backs, shoulders, and hips made ecstatically, imagistically associative by the down humps planted in Kawakubo’s wool, polyurethane, and organdy gowns.” Hilton Als, “Bump and Mind,” Artforum, December 1996.
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One of my favorite fashion moments of all times is, for different reasons, Rei Kawakubo’s “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” collection from 1996. At the time, I was in Paris doing an internship for Thierry Mugler; it was the season ZKHQ0XJOHUDQG*DXOWLHUGLGWKHLUÀUVW haute couture shows, and Galliano did KLVÀUVW'LRUVKRZDQG0F4XHHQGLGKLV ÀUVW FROOHFWLRQ IRU *LYHQFK\ ,W ZDV DOVR the time when that Comme des Garçons collection was hanging in the CDG shop in Paris, not the new one, but the one at Etienne Marcel – I love that shop so much, and I loved the smell of it, it smelled OLNH &RPPH GHV *DUoRQV WKH ÀUVW perfume. And while it was really great to work at Mugler and get to look at all that great Parisian fashion, seeing Comme des Garçons was special because it was so different. Imagine, to be surrounded by haute couture and then go to Comme des Garçons and see all those weird clothes and those amazing skirts in paper and all the shapes and the colors, like little bulbs made of what had to be polyester in RUDQJHDQGWXUTXRLVH$QG\RXFRXOGWU\ these things on – it was amazing. Even the simplest pieces; I remember this black T-shirt that just had like a bulb protruding on one side. Every time I think about it, I regret not having bought anything, because the clothes were relatively not that expensive at the time. And I know that even now, 14 years later, if I went to any party wearing that T-shirt with a bulb, it would be something. That collection will always be great. LUIS VENEGAS, Creative Director and Publisher, EY! Megateen, Fanzine 137 & Candy, for 032c
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“This season, Ms. Kawakubo might have pushed the handpicked audience of supporters a bit too far. There is a delicate balance to her Comme des Garçons admiration society. Most important each season is her concept, which this time was ‘body meets dress, dress meets body and becomes one.’ But typically she throws a bone to those who still believe clothes are for wearing outside fashion
focus groups without being gawked at. “This time there wasn’t much for this contingent. Ms. Kawakubo was experimenting with new forms and new bodies. So beneath beautiful stretch-fabric dresses she stuffed lumpy masses that looked a bit like collagen injections run amok. Shaped like kidney beans, sometimes they sprouted above the breasts. Sometimes they ballooned out of the back. Hamish Bowles, the European editor of Vogue, suggested that the clothes looked like something from ‘The Piano’ as if costume details like bustles had been interpreted by the Maori tribe. But others were less kind. At one point, as a model emerged, her shoulders stuffed, a photographer yelled out ‘Quasimodo’ into the deathly silent presentation, with no music and certainly no chatting. If the pads were removed, of course, there would have been painfully pretty layered stretch dresses with high necks, in colors like lavender and gray, or modern prints of melded watery colors, pale green, yellow, orange and pale blue. But mostly the dresses invented whole new deformities for women. The only mass with a positive connotation was one that jutted from the front like a pregnant body. There were some lovely dresses ZLWKLQ WKH VKRZ HTXDOO\ DV FRQFHSWXDO DQGHTXDOO\XQZHDUDEOHVRPHELJEXE bles that rose up from the hips so the model became an unopened flower, some giant swaths of red fabric that rendered models virtually immobile, and some that had skirts resembling waxed brown paper bags with big, bright jackets of what looked like crinkled crinolines. Ms. Kawakubo said she was looking to the future, and it’s true that ideas she started in the past – deconstruction, for instance – were hard to get used to. So, years from now, perhaps it will seem remarkable that these new shapes met resistant eyes, but it is highly unlikely.” Amy Spindler, “Is It New and Fresh or Merely Strange?”, The New York Times, October 10, 1996.
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REI ´,QSHUVRQWKHGHVLJQHULVDVGLIÀFXOWWR pin down as her clothes.” Frankel, 2010.
“People have the wrong idea about her, she’s not hard at all – she’s a gentle soul who loves old trees and cats and dogs… and big fat diamonds!” $GULDQ-RIIHLQ´$QWLIDVKLRQGHVLJQHUµ The Star Online0DOD\VLD-XO\
REI-ISMS
“A collection is never not an exercise in suffering.” “What doesn’t sell today, sells tomorrow.” “For something to beautiful, it doesn’t have to be pretty.” “Clothes are my views.” REFUSAL “There may be many reasons why Kawakubo resists verbal communication – one might attribute it to a deep mistrust of members the press who, let’s face it, were plain antipathetic when she started out or, simply to the fact that the designer may well just be shy.” Frankel, 2010.
“Said to have been exploring the boundaries of malleable form in movement with padded bumps at bust, rear, and midriff combined with a stretchy synthetic gingham, Kawakubo has never verbally confirmed a frustration with IDVKLRQ·VSDVVLRQIRUÀWHYHQHPDFLDWHG PRGHOVDQGPDQQHTXLQVµ
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5HL.DZDNXERLQRIÀFLDOSRUWUDLWE\(LLFKLUR6DNDWD The designer’s hairstyle, a variation of the classic bob, has remained unchanged in over three decades.
“Kawakubo, who has been labeled melancholic for her early use of black, has declined comment on these criticisms and allegations.”
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The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (www.metmuseum.org/toah)
RETAIL Seizing the media blast that followed KHU ÀUVW SUHVHQWDWLRQ LQ 3DULV LQ Rei Kawakubo started to devise a retail strategy that would instantly become the company’s main vehicle to articulate its image. The label’s early shops, with their near absence of design (the Paris store was notorious for its emptiness), appear in retrospect as mere exercises before embarking on a larger scheme that would come to express Comme des Garçons’ identity in contained physical spaces. In 1998, a collaboration with the British design studio Future Systems created WKHEUDQG·VWULSW\FKRIÁDJVKLSV 7RN\R Paris, NY), which are now classics of
store design. In New York, for instance, the team envisioned a Chelsea garage warping into an aluminum vortex. Added to these early milestones more recently ZHUHDÀYHVWRU\QDUURZPRQROLWKZKLWH and windowless, in the heart of Hong Kong, and a pure black prosthesis in Kyoto, both also including gallery space. &RPPH GHV *DUoRQV· $GULDQ -RIIH LV credited as the architect of the Guerrilla concept, scouting the world’s most unH[SHFWHGIDVKLRQGHVWLQDWLRQVWRÀQGWKH ideal partners for the temporary stores the brand created between 2004 and
2008. In collaboration with scientists, cooks, writers, and friends of the house (the Guerrilla rules stating that local partners are not to be specifically involved in fashion), around 20 Guerrilla Stores appeared and disappeared, to use the brand’s language, in Athens, Barcelona, Basel, Beirut, Berlin, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Ljubljana, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Singapore, Stockholm, and Warsaw, among others. Systematically named Comme des Garçons Guerrilla Stores + XXX (with the international area code corresponding to the geo-localization), their design was dictated by modesty, ephemerality (never longer than a year), and the preservation of elements from the space’s previous function (not renovation, but acclimatization and improvement) – all for a ridiculously VPDOO ÀQDQFLDO LQYHVWPHQW 7KH VLPSOH formula was a commercial success that agitated the media and public attention with its radical-seeming approach. BeFDXVH WKH SRSXS FRQFHSW TXLFNO\ EH came a copied gimmick, Comme resolutely terminated the Guerrilla project in 2008, and initiated the Comme des Garçons POCKET stores, which premiered in Paris. As a mutant crossover EHWZHHQ D KLJKHQG ERXWLTXH DQG D convenience store, POCKET offers the brand’s easiest products to retail. To celebrate 40 years of the label, along with a massive communication campaign that included billboards (New York) and subway advertisements (Tokyo), Comme des Garçons BLACK opened in several cities worldwide and unveiled the eponymous, more affordable line, demonstrating Kawakubo’s swift and secure investigation into all layers of the market at once. The same Ready-toAccess idea is synthesized in PLAYBOX, a simple colorful booth installed, market-style, in front of CDG stores to ÁRRG WKH VWUHHW ZLWK WKH EUDQG·V KLJKO\ accessible PLAY line. (PSKDVL]LQJ WKH ÁHD PDUNHW QRWLRQ of “beautiful chaos”– a primal Kawakubo constituent – Comme wielded its full
economic clout with Dover Street Market. Think for a second of the real-estate value of such a space in London Mayfair. But, again, the investment was paired with pragmatism (e.g, by renting lots in the concession to invited participants and brands, or welcoming merchandise on a consignment basis). Kawakubo’s original atelier, which neighbors the PDLQ RIÀFH DQG GHVLJQ VWXGLR DQG WKH $R\DPD &'* 7RN\R ÁDJVKLS PD\ EH the brand’s most versatile retail entity. It functions as a laboratory for various experiments Comme is testing on its own ground, to potentially later expand virally around the world. Among the space’s many incarnations include the ÀUVW FROODERUDWLRQ ZLWK KLJKHQG QLFKH retailer Colette (Colette meets Comme des Garçons); the shop-in-sculpture-inDUFKLWHFWXUH -$1 &RPPH GHV *DUoRQV ZLWK DUWLVW -DQ GH &RFN +$33< $U my Store, a funky-cheeky-messy military shop designed by and selling the labels RI-XQ\D:DWDQDEH ZKRRIIHUHGKLVRZQ JXHUULOOD H[SHULHQFH ZLWK WKH H
sized BE@RBRICKS (CDG being the only label authorized to have them produced larger than 1000%), and installations by Michael Howells, who was also responsible for some of the most outstanding parts of Dover Street Market, are here to reinstate Kawakubo’s ambition: to constantly instigate new stunts in an apathetic field, and to celebrate shopping as a transformative experience where economic power can be used to inject commerce with culture. CYRIL DUVAL (item idem) for 032c
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“The historian and curator Valerie Steele sees a kind of violence – even a brutalism – to Rei’s work that made most fashion of the time look innocuous and bourgeois, and from that moment an avantgarde split from the mainstream and hurtled off in its own direction.” Thurman, 2005.
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SALVAGE “Rei used to love going through the garEDJHWRÀQGWKLQJVZH·GWKURZQRXW²QRZ I bring our garbage can with us.” Ronnie Cooke Newhouse in Rawsthorn, 2009.
SCENARIO On October, 14 1997, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company premiered Scenario at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The dancers were wearing costumes designer by Rei Kawakubo. ´7KHFRVWXPHVVWROHWKHVKRZ7KHÀUVW colorful section suggested a tropical utopia, an undiscovered island of weird cultural signifiers, of Others dancing away. When the dancers came out in their black Kawakubos, I thought of French poodles groomed for show; or Victorian widows, their bustles askew; or the precarious black hair-buns of geishas; or Dior’s New Look, with its fertility goddess swells. I had not conVLGHUHG MXVW KRZ XELTXLWRXV EXPSV and humps are in fashion history, how QDWXUDO WR WKH ODQGVFDSH RI DUWLÀFH 1RU had I ever seen the Cunningham dancers ORRN JODPRURXV LQ TXLWH WKLV ZD\ ² LQ D fashion context. The women’s strong, slim, lower legs were suddenly gorgeous, feminine legs – eroticized. Gams.” /DXUD-DFREV´&RPSXWHUJDPHV 0HUFH&XQQLQJ ham,” The New Criterion, December 1997.
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Thurman, 2005.
SEX Falling somewhere between an Amish smock and a Coogi sweater on the hotness scale, Comme des Garçons is, without a doubt, the least sexy of any fashion label today. More platonic than erotic, more comical than come-hither, the clothes simply do not hug a woman’s curves in the way French designers do or leave the ÁHVK EDUH LQ WKH ZD\ ,WDOLDQ GHVLJQHUV do. They don’t even subliminally echo, suggest or point to a person’s naughty bits. “Like boys,” it would seem, is just a name. Not even when Rei Kawakubo began showing her collections in Paris in 1981 did her designs become any more titillating or romantic. While suggestive, the spring 1997 collection known as “lumps and bumps” (ascribed by the press) was more about bodily extremes than carnal desire. And the Rolling Stone tongue-and-lips prints of the spring 2006 men’s collection was less about male OLELGRWKDQULIÀQJRQDWUDGHPDUN1RWR this day the Comme des Garçons look has more to do with its original inspiration, UXVWLF -DSDQHVH SHDVDQWU\ WKDQ D URPS in the hay. But let’s be clear. It isn’t that Ms. Kawakubo takes a clutch-pearls, Victorian view on sex. It’s as if the subject doesn’t ever enter her thought process. Not even that most sensuous of designer offerings, the perfume, is remotely arousing when it comes from the Comme des Garçons camp. Among its best-sellers, Odeur is in fact an “anti-perfume,” and touted as such. With notes that include nail polish and burnt rubber, it’s a far cry IURPWKHSUHWW\ÁRUDOVVZHDW\PXVNVDQG pheromone-laden wannabe aphrodisiacs on the market. Perhaps there is a sexual innuendo in the more recent fragrance, Wonderwood, but it’s doubtful.
Only two Comme des Garçons advertisements have ever come to my attention. One was for PLAY, a secondary line, and the other a fragrance. But even if Comme advertised its scents as heavily as Dolce & Gabbana or Roberto Cavalli do, you would never, ever see a wind-blown, spread-eagled, airbrushed model draped in a near-orgiastic state over shirtless, swarthy men. Of this you can be sure. So, okay, sex is off-limits in the Comme des Garçons universe. Which is to say, of course, that Comme, that most LURQLFRIODEHOVLVXWWHUO\XQHTXLYRFDOO\ impossibly sexy. LEE CARTER, Founder and Editor in Chief, Hintmag.com, for 032c
SIX “Begun in 1988 and published bi-annually, that is, for the Spring and Fall collections of Comme des Garçons, Six was never intended to be merely a means of itemizing what was for sale, that much is clear. Large format (15.5 x 11.5) of folded loose leaves, it is not a pocket book! Its format imposes a presence and physicality upon the reader or viewer, since each issue is much more a folio of photographs and collage in performance than a picture book of pretty glossy snaps, hence the preference for black and white (rather than color) as though in line with art house black DQG ZKLWH ÀOP ,W EULQJV DQ DSSURDFK to content and style that is wholly avantgarde: beginning with the (relative) use of anonymity in order to facilitate the sense of the review as a collective creative endeavor; the fact that the journal is given away free to all interested parties (a form of potlatch, then); the range of
Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Malgosia Bela wears Comme des Garçons F/W 2008
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SECRECY ´7KHTXHVWSURFHHGVEHKLQGFORVHGGRRUV like a papal election, and successive meditations on the koan produce more or OHVVDGHTXDWHUHVXOWVµ
materials and subjects brought together: IXUQLWXUHSKRWRJUDSK\ÀQHDUWVSRHWU\ architecture and urbanism, portraiture, clothing; the recovery of out-of-theway materials (the photographs of the people, landscape and folk-art of Georgia, for example, a sort of contemporary Pont-Aven of the Gauguin and Nabis symbolistes; of the Surrealist-inflected photography of André Kertész along with the Constructivist cinema of Dziga Vertov), and all of this in the presentation of a view (an image) of living as integrated phenomenon, above all, the way in which these materials are brought together to make of the journal Six a laboratory of ideas, ideas which will then take on a life of their own in different forms (lines in furniture, clothing, interior architecture, photography, no less than dance in at least one case).” Michael Stone-Richards, “I am A Cat,” Refusing Fashion, MOCAD 2008.
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“From 1988 to 1991, Kawabuko embarked on a bold experiment that transformed the notion of a fashion catalogue from a documentary listing of individual LWHPV LQWR D EROG DYDQWJDUGH ÀQH DUWV magazine that incidentally included images of the season’s line. She called the publication Sixth Sense, or Six for short, explaining in the premier issue, ‘”Six” is the sixth sense. It is the sense of the surreal. Although the sixth sense LV LPSRVVLEOH WR GHVFULEH ´ÁDLUµ PD\ be one aspect of this sense.’ Each issue mixed newly commissioned works by the hottest contemporary fashion photographers showcasing Comme des Garçons wardrobe with iconic images created by the masters of photography. &RQWHPSRUDU\DUWLVWVIUHTXHQWO\DSSHD red in the issues, both with their art and DV PRGHOV 7KH RYHUDOO JULWW\ TXDOLW\ RI the prints is evocative of Kawakubo’s design aesthetic, which in the early days of the company was considered ‘Hiroshima chic.’” Abstract from library catalogue, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. 000
SPACE “Her clothing is not so much about the body as the space around the body and the metaphor of self … the garment as a construction in space, essentially a structure to live in.” Sarah Bodine, “Kawakubo, Rei,” fashionencyclopedia.com.
‘Kawakubo’s clothes are architectonic or sculptural, concentrating on structure rather than surface. The garments are constructed and assembled, rather like a building, and because they are almost DOZD\V VSDWLDO LQ QDWXUH WKH\ UHTXLUH a body to inhabit them, to supply the missing volume – often they are inconceivable without the body and, for this reason, are often much better off the rack and on the body.’
T Hodge, 2000.
TASTE “I played with notions of bad taste and then did them the Comme des Garçons way. Of course, bad taste done by Comme des Garçons becomes good taste.” Rei Kawakubo via The Fashion Spot, 2008
TYPEFACE ´,W·VIDVKLRQ·VÀUVWQRQORJRLWFDSWXUHV Comme’s spirit of complicated simplicity.” Paola Antonelli, Design curator, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, regarding the font, with a star instead of a cedilla, that is the company’s de-facto logo. “The World’s Top 50 Logos,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), October 27, 2000
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URBANISM “Let it be said that Kawakubo’s enterprise has an urbanism. Prada has locations, many of them urban, but it doesn’t have an urbanism. Comme des Garçons is never on the main street of the most obvious shopping neighborhood. When Kawakubo established stable and proper showrooms, they tend to be invisible from the street – polka dot curved glass is inset from the building line, windows are spare and lack the loud broadcasting design of traditional storefront display and tunnels, and other kinds of passageways are constructed to keep the destination itself always at bay. Of course the guerilla stores – moving around like QRPDGVRUVTXDWWHUVZKRDGRSWSODFHVDV they are found – take this urban principle and put it into action. If most stores today simply make static urban monuments, Comme des Garçons is an active urbanism of stealth and evasion, where shops walk DURXQG WKH ZRUOG OLNH XSGDWHG ÁDQHXUV ZKR FDQ ÀQG SULYDF\ DQG VHFUHF\ RQO\ when exposed and in the midst of the chaotic city.” Sylvia Lavin, “Pas Comme des architectes,” Refusing Fashion, MOCAD 2008.
URINE In September 1994, Comme des Garçons introduced its first perfume. It ZDV SUHVHQWHG DV D XULQH\HOORZ OLTXLG in plastic bags laid out around the swimming pool at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The fragrance’s concept was “WORKS LIKE A MEDICINE, BEHAVES LIKE A DRUG”.
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VEHICLE “Despite her wealth, her only apparent major indulgence is a vintage car, a monster Mitsubishi from the 1970s, which attracts the kind of stares in Tokyo that her clothes attract in Houston.”
Rei Kawakubo: “It’s not personality. It’s hard work. When Estée Lauder accepted her achievement award at the Fashion Group last fall she said she didn’t get where she got by chance. She worked. It’s the same with me. I worked hard every day.
That’s all it is – a lot of hard work.”
X W Klensch, 1987.
Thurman, 2005
WEIWEI, AI
&RQFXUUHQWWRKLVVXQÁRZHUVHHGLQVWDOODWLRQ at Tate Modern, Dover Street Market sells T-shirts by the Chinese artist for £15.
WORD “I start every collection with one word, I can never remember where this one word came from. I never start a collection with some historical, social, cultural or any other concrete reference or memory. AfWHU,ÀQGWKHZRUG,WKHQGRQRWGHYHORS it in any logical way. I deliberately avoid any order to the thought process after ÀQGLQJWKHZRUGDQGLQVWHDGWKLQNDERXW the opposite of the word, or something different to it, or behind it.”
XY/XX Comme des Garçons, “like boys”: it’s been a gender game from the beginning. Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls… A graphic upending of sartorial orthodoxy in which the image of a man in a skirt is essential, because of WKH TXHVWLRQV LW SRVHV DERXW WUDGLWLRQ perception, aesthetics, and gender – or so it seems. But nothing is ever what it seems with Rei Kawakubo – and so it is with a man in a skirt. Walter van Beirendonck, a designer Rei Kawakubo happens to admire, once said, “When it is properly balanced, a skirt is without gender,” and, “Whether clothes are for men and women is all in the head.” Rei’s head is clear of preconception. Comme des Garçons integrates traditional elements of menswear and womenswear
LQ WKH PRVW PDWWHURIIDFW PDQQHU -XVW how matter-of-fact becomes clear when you look at the ways other designers have proposed skirts for men: subversive, or provocative, or sexual, or aggressive, or satirical. There is none of that in the sight of Cole Mohr marching down the Comme catwalk in an ensemble that marries the monochrome rigor of clerical gear with the strictness of an Edwardian governess. But these are my preconceptions, not Rei’s. 7KH WZR JUHDWHVW LQÁXHQFHV RQ WKH HYR lution of the silhouette and attitude RI FRQWHPSRUDU\ -DSDQHVH IDVKLRQ DUH Edwardian England and Vivienne Westwood. Rei Kawakubo mirrors both, the disciplined ego of one, the unleashed id RIWKHRWKHU%XWZKDWUHDOO\GHÀQHVKHU interpretation is the notion of a kind of WUDQVFHQGHQWWULEDOLVP LQGLJHQRXV-DSDQ ÀQGLQJ SULPDO NLQVKLS ZLWK WKH &HOWV It is also transcendent in that it rises above prosaic categorizations to explore a post-gender universality. So “comme des garçons” is ultimately also “comme GHV ÀOOHVµ 1R ZRQGHU 5HL·V FORWKHV DUH increasingly knotty. They’ll take centuries to untangle.
Rei Kawakubi in Horyn, 2008.
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WORK Elsa Klensch: “What personality traits have contributed most to your success?”
YAMAMOTO, YOHJI The designer and Rei Kawakubo were a couple from the Seventies till the early Nineties.
TIM BLANKS, fashion critic, for 032c
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ZERO “Collection after collection, Kawakubo obliterates her past.” Koda, 2008.
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TO LOVE ALONE Hilton Als The longer you live, the more life laughs in your face. Life: that old friend and enemy who knows all your secrets and tells them to you in the most unexpected or inconvenient places: in bed, as you drift off to sleep; in the cinema, as you drift into a performer’s dream of a face; while swimming in waters thick with salt, shafts of sunlight, murkiness. Sometimes, in one’s living, fragments of a former self reappear, dressed to the nines, but always in the wrong clothes. When, in memory, do we ever look “correct”? Always, in my memory these days, I look “less” standing next to my now dead father, not that he was especially well-dressed. What my father was: beautiful to many women, in part because he was far away from the concerns of “fashion”; in addition to having his own style – soft V-neck cardigans, sensible shoes for the long walks he loved taking – he was immune to social life; he lived more or less by himself, even as he lived with other people. Before he died I wasn’t close to my father for many years, but I’ve generally been interested in men who represent him sartorially; that is, I’ve always been interested in men who are immune to trend, and who have the ability to treat clothes not as fashion but as an element of self-expression, their own private language made visible. +HZDVWKHÀUVWRQH,NQHZZKRZRUH²DPRQJ other things – Comme des Garçons. He was an art director at the “alternative” weekly I worked at back then; this must have been 1988 or so. Back then, I didn’t speak to my father, but I spoke to him: he of the linen Comme des Garçons jacket, and collector of Rei Kawakubo’s Six Magazine, that sharer of this hitherto unknown designer who was categorized as a “deconstructionist.” What did that mean? My now fast friend, the art director showed me what that meant when he took me, one
afternoon, to Comme Des Garçons SHIRT. There was a shirt with half a collar, or a dress shirt with no collar at all. He showed me this: a shirt could mean something other than “shirt,” just as Gertrude Stein had proved that a sentence could look and feel and sound like something other than an ordinary sentence. My friend was a rose was a rose was a rose. He not only collected Gertrude Stein’s books, but the occassional Comme des Garçons “piece,” as he called Rei Kawakubo’s clothes. (Before my friend, I did not know that clothing could be art, or that an underthing could be as beautiful and necessary as a Brancusi, say.) My friend lived, at times, in Kawakubo’s black rayon knickers. Or a striped jacket with the armpits removed. In all his Comme des Garçons clothes, though (how we loved the name of Rei Kawakubo’s enterprise, especially since we didn’t want to be boys at all!) there nested, always, P\IULHQG·VVPHOOKLVXQLTXHPL[WXUHRIEDE\RLODQG coffee and perspiration. His odor made his clothes his own. How we found one another, I’ll never know. Not content with my ability to love him, and my great joy in learning from him, I shared him with a ZRPDQIULHQGZKRKDGDJUHDWLQWHUHVWLQ-DSDQDQG design, too. One afternoon, we took her to Comme Des Garçons SHIRT, where my friend photographed her wearing various Comme Des Garçons shirts. In some of the pictures you can see her face – a face that had the shape and contours, some of her friends VDLGRIWKHIDFHVVHHQLQDQFLHQW-DSDQHVHZRRGFXWV 6KHGLHGÀYH\HDUVDJRDQGEHFDXVHP\IULHQGORYHG her, I haven’t seen him since she died, and that is part of his genius: to identify deeply with all manner of the living and the dead, down to their clothes.
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