Rei Kawakubo sent a surprisingly personal note by email from Tokyo. Essentially it was a pithy list-to-self about getting rid of the mental snares and conventions of fashion that block her from doing something new:
THEME: MY PRESENT STATE OF MIND RATHER THAN A THEME
*Things I feel we don’t need these days:
Wow! If that sounded a lot like Kawakubo was heading toward something like calm, stripped-back minimalism, then one look at the video and look book of the Comme des Garçons show in Tokyo proved the futility of second-guessing anything she might be thinking.
She went instead toward giant portable sculptures that were imprinted with flowers, leaves and bows. There were huge shapes, which meant models had to squeeze or shuffle sideways to emerge through a door onto a set. It didn’t feel like one of Kawakubo’s dystopian, apocalyptic moments in which she has seemed to sound a warning about bad things coming. Was her popping-out scenario closer to suggesting a feeling of rebirth, re-emergence, maybe?
If so, it’s into a world where—as other fashion designers have been saying—nothing makes sense. Randomness, surrealism and absurdity are registering as part of the mood of 2021. Kawakubo, in confronting her “present state of mind” went large, very, very large, occupying space in ways that no women is meant to (though to be honest, vast art-fashion structures have been her safe space for experimenting for years).
She certainly met her own criterion of avoiding making clothes. Comme “dresses” were presented as abstract perambulating 3-D fabric structures, topped off with pastiches of plastic cartoon girly wigs by Gary Card.
Some of them had a sort of curved prow; several had net-filled cones spurting from their backs; some were ovoid, another was a 3-D black trashbag flower. Eventually there was an impression of the weight of furnishing fabric and swishing curtain swags. In the end there was a piece that seemed to have entirely merged a woman with a comfy black and white upholstered armchair.
Creative minds don’t think alike. Each to their own brains and oeuvres—but the states of emergency during COVID times have impacted creative people’s psyches, and now their responses are coming out. Paris Fashion Week missed having the Comme de Garçons show to contemplate at a time when fashion needs fearless innovators to take it forward. Kawakubo sets an example for all: a designer who has been independent for a lifetime and is still pushing. Still, you win some, you lose some, a lesson we’ve all had to learn in COVID: The upside of Kawakubo’s isolation from Paris is that she’s actually opened up and used her voice to explain more of how she’s thinking. And that’s a first.
