If any other designer released a statement saying she was thinking about “invisible clothes,” you’d leap to the conclusion that they were talking about seeing through some sort of sheer fabric to a naked body beneath (there’s been a lot of that about this season). But it was Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons who said this, while proceeding to construct a series of some of the biggest, most covered-up shapes ever to occupy a runway. Kawakubo continues to challenge almost everything about fashion, including whether her shows are actually “fashion” at all. To watch this parade of enormous, sculptural pieces was to wonder whether her subject might really be the invisibility of women, rather than clothes. In almost every case, the body, and sometimes the head, almost disappeared from sight within the perambulating structures. And yet, paradoxically, each of these was a female presence that occupied the most enormous amount of space.
Rei Kawakubo’s status as an independent entrepreneur in charge of a significant self-built fashion retail empire, which is also a haven for small avant-garde designers, gives her the freedom to do what she wants with a show. Though she long ago took a radically opposite route from any ordinary fashion trend-setting, there is also the sense in her shows that she is setting an example, tackling disturbing and painful subjects about the experience of being female. Her opening image, a giant, flounced coat with a cut-out porthole, revealed a swollen, black-clad belly, literally pregnant with meaning.
But what meaning? Maybe this time, the subject was more about being Rei Kawakubo, and the creativity she has produced over so many years. Though far from being a literal retrospective, those who have followed and revered and studied Comme des Garçons since the ’80s were able to recognize multiple references to her oeuvre in these gargantuan, molded sculptures in cloth. There was an innocent Peter Pan–collared schoolgirl dress, sunk into a giant quilted disc. There was her fondness for tartan, exhibited as a kind of vast kilt; her love of black-and-white polka dots displayed over an enormous coat. There was a moment for bright red, patent, and frills, maybe an echo of her “Sex” collection.
So it went, provoking far more questions than yielding easy answers. But again, that’s a paradox. The fact that Rei Kawakubo does not make her work easy to understand is the very reason the fashion world idolizes her. As the audience left, the arguments over the meanings of this show continued late into the night.
