The Originals

We look at the independent, influential designers who have built giant successes by never wavering from their daring visions.

- Jeffrey Yan

COMME DES GARÇONS

This month’s “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is a historic show because it is The Met’s first to focus on a single, living designer since Yves Saint Laurent’s exhibition in 1983. And how fitting because no other contemporary designer has come close to Kawakubo in pushing design, construction and silhouette to the extremes of what it could be. When she arrived in Paris in the Eighties, it was a shock to the system. Even the colour she favours – black – was seen as radical. Her work explores the history of clothes and their meaning, and reimagines them into entirely new creations. Her designs often defy logic and comprehension, appearing bizarre to the non-fashion eye. Instead, they are driven by emotions. Recent collections have been called Invisible Clothes, Boyhood, 18th Century Punks, The Naked King, and Blue Witches – their names alone inviting strong visceral reactions.

The garments she creates are not just explorations of the purpose of clothing, but meditations on femininity, masculinity, innocence, experience, evolution and revolution. Kawakubo often borrows from history; taking bustles, ruffs and panniers and then repurposing and transforming them into new garments with new meanings. Sometimes her clothes are armours, at other times they are treasure chests of forgotten mementoes. Her materials are equally left field – Kawakubo can work with something as conventional as grey wool, black leather and white tulle to something as banal as grey felt, padding, brown wrapping paper or silver foil.