Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo (1942). Japanese designer. She is Madame Comme des Garµons, a griffe established in 1969. She was born in Tokyo, the eleventh of october 1949, where she began her career in fashion working in a textile company. In 1981 her first Paris Collection upset the prêt-à-porter scene with an emphasis on pauperism that seemed to propose rags rather than dresses. The models were pale, uncombed girls, wrapped in layers of fabrics that had nothing to do with elegance. In addition, everything was stressed by black, a sort of color-philosophy which creates anguish and anxiety. Her shows seem to boast decadence, shabbiness: actually, it is a style made of subtle references, of clothes which break rules, create the unexpected. She herself says: “A fundamental element of my career was the fact of living it as a means of being exposed to the reaction of the public.” Cultivated and always closer to art than to the concept of products for the clothing market, she is the priestess of minimalism, in the past as well as in the present, the avant-garde of poor stylism. Her fashion is the expression of her coherence. She detests decorations and is indifferent to seasonal trends: she is not influenced by the ideas of others, but starts every time from the beginning. The facts say she is in the right: she has fans all over the world, even men, for whom she can get away with designing suits featuring female patterns. She says: “Masculinity can be expressed with flowers, you just have to work around it.” She sees fashion as an escape from daily chores, a desire for freedom, especially within oneself. Western and Eastern elements, tailoring volumes and researching materials are her favorite ingredients: she is a voice outside the choir, representing free inventions that sometimes let themselves be seduced by “the complete opposite,” but a he-she mix, in which the tailcoat is enriched with ruches and the blouse’s frills stress the rigor of the tie. This is an exception which is not a rule: if one looks at the steps she has taken, it is evident how her ideas have always been ahead of the field, and have become current concepts. She is far from the mass, a little mysterious, charming but enigmatic. The designer has influenced fashion by sweeping away stereotyped images and setting a completely different look. More than describing her models, you breathe the atmosphere, one that has affected the younger generations and stirred criticism by those traditionalists unable to see in her Collections a boundless creativity, both in fabrics and in colors. Her proposals are always subdued in tone, in particular in her knitwear: turtlenecks with checked longuettes, alternative yet simple and refined sportswear. Or plaid patterns for Empire-style midi-dresses, swaying skirts matched with pale blouses. And a sort of do-it-yourself style, with rolled-up jersey panels tied around the body. A continuous discovery in the name of the poor: it is here that Rei Kawakubo expresses her power. She creates a brave and revolutionary fashion design, an anarchy that destroys the old rules and creates new ones.
For the Fall-Winter Collection 2001-2002, presented in the Wagram salon of Paris, the designer launched the “erotic woman” by Comme des Garµons. To the music of Je t’aime, moi non plus by Serge Gainsbourg, models displayed lingerie-dresses shaped as petticoats, with bras worn over the jackets.
2003. She experimented with collaborations with dance groups and big names in international photography.