When Rei Kawakubo uses color, critics always take note. After bursting on the Paris scene in the 1980s, the Japanese designer made black, said Vogue, “the color of fashion”—despite the naysayers who “swore her apocalyptic vision would never catch on.”
Even if it turned out that Kawakubo was less married to the color than those who followed her—in 1993 she announced that “red is black”[i] —her carnival-esque Spring 1996 show, called “Kaleidoscope,” was nonetheless unexpected. Kawakubo’s models looked like walking rainbows from the tip of their candy-floss clown wigs to the toes of their color-blocked bowling shoes. Some wore outfits with color fields reminiscent of Kazimir Malevich’s Sportsmen painting, others sported mismatched stripes. Sixties-style shifts were enlivened with irregular patches of solid color, and there was a small group of floral prints styled like babushkas. Monochromatic embroidered dresses, some in plastic, were as pretty and ephemeral as escaping balloons.
