Rei Kawakubo combined flannels, tropical florals, blanket patterns, and sheers in Comme des Garçons’s Fall 1993 “Synergy” show. “When designing clothes, there’s a certain rule that the fabrics must match with one another for them to be comfortable,” the designer said. “I wanted to break that rule.” In doing so, wrote Vogue, “Kawakubo [had] become the guru of a whole generation of deconstructivists who are tearing through fashion, challenging all previous notions of status and certainty.”
Kawakubo and her fellow “deconstructivists,” designers like Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester, were promoting the chaos started by the punk movement, albeit with more control. While punk is a recurring motif in the work of Kawakubo and her protégé Junya Watanabe, this collection owes more to grunge. “Synergy” was presented six months after a trifecta of New York grunge shows from Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis, Anna Sui, and Christian Francis Roth. Pieces from the collection were photographed for Vogue’s September 1993 issue, on Kristen McMenamy and Shalom Harlow, who wore that ’90s staple, a slip dress, with a long cardigan and Dr. Martens–like boots. Talk about sartorial nirvana.
