I Make Clothes For Strong Women

Over her 45-year career, REI KAWAKUBO has radically transformed fashion. However, as the famously reclusive Comme des Garçons designer tells OLIVIA SINGER, hers is an agonising creative process—and the only way to move forward now is to never look back strong women make clothes forward now is to never look back.

- Olivia Singer

In Place Vendôme, amid some of the world’s finest jewellery houses and just across from the Ritz, is a discreet passageway that leads to Comme des Garçons. Tucked between the glittering façades of Piaget and Cartier is the brand’s European headquarters, where, contained within a splendid 18th-century building, its very ordinary decor is in stark contrast to the historic glamour of this Parisian square. Here the floors are unlacquered, lighting comes by way of neon strips, and tables are of that plain wooden sort found in classrooms around the world. At the end of the room, raised a few feet above the rest of us, is a big glass window that gives a glimpse into the main office. When editors and journalists come to inspect her creations in the days after she presents them on the runway, this is where Rei Kawakubo sits, her chair precisely arranged so that while you examine her designs, you can just glimpse her silhouette. She is omnipresent yet removed. This is, of course, the perfect analogy for the way that she operates.