Vogue devoted a two-page spread to Rei Kawakubo’s “Adult Punk” show of Fall 1997. Annie Leibovitz’s photo depicts seven models standing at the water’s edge looking like alien sprites in full-on makeup and slicked-up mohawks, re-created by Pat McGrath and Julien d’Ys from the show. Their delicate but not precious clothes looked like they might have come from “Miss Havisham’s couture atelier,” Vogue wrote. Depending on your point of view, they were either “the cutting edge,” or walked the “line between innovation and incoherence.”
The magazine came down in favor of the former, suggesting that “Kawakubo’s take on pattern-making [was] a send up of the way clothes are made.” Still, this was deconstruction at its gentlest. Much of the collection was ivory-colored, and some of the stiff fabrics were embroidered with gold, which gave them a sense of luxury that was balanced by sheer insets that revealed surprising red biker-like shorts.
