Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between

When The Costume Institute at the Metropotan Museum of Art decided to dedicate an entire show to Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, they were making a statement. The Costume Institute hasn’t set aside an exhibition to a living designer since Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, known colloquially as the Met, is now showing roughly 140 pieces of Kawakubo’s womenswear crafted over the past several decades for Comme des Garçons, the Japanese fashion label founded by Kawakubo in 1969. Shown under The Costume Institute’s spring show, Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between opened with a private exhibition and is set to open to the public today.

Kawakubo, made a name for herself in Paris in the early 1980’s with the collection titled Destroy. The collection was a strong call to the punk movement, and set the tone for the decades to come which would see Kawakubo consciously reference punk repeatedly. Her work has often touched on it ­ideologically, with themes of destruction, chaos and one’s self.

Many of the pieces in Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between pass into the world of the surreal, a common occurrence in the avant-garde designer’s oeuvre and an element that can be seen across the entire Comme des Garçons brand.­­­

There are nine themes in the exhibition: Absence/Presence, Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes. Design/Not Design, for example, examines potentially challenging ideas such as unfinished or asymmetrical work. Indeed, the pieces presented within this theme may seem unfinished or overly technical.

High/Low incorporates elements of street style with two distinct collections: Motorbike Ballerina and Bad Taste, the former of which Kawakubo described as “Harley Davidson meets Margot Fonteyn” given its combination of tutus and biker jackets. Bad Taste, on the other hand, combines punk and fetish styles into singular garments using cheap materials such as polyester.

The enigmatic and often reticent designer appeared at the Met this past Friday, sporting her usual uniform of a black leather motorcycle jacket. Often refraining from speaking, she tends to dictate her speech to her husband and Comme des Garçons CEO Adrian Joffe.

An icon within the fashion design world, Kawakubo was an early pioneer of many themes that came to be mainstays in fashion design, such as pop-up shops, artificiality and androgyny. She has said before that creating something new is a paramount priority in her work, and that is plainly evident in her exhibition at the Met. The section entitled Then/Now, driving home that point, is all about moving forward: “Rei consistently argues that she doesn’t look back, so her engagement with history is a constant rejection and redefinition of it,” says Andrew Bolton, head curator of The Costume Institute.

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between will be open to the public from Thursday 4 May – Monday 4 September 2017.

www.metmuseum.org

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Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969); Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Roversi.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Blue Witch, spring/summer 2016; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Roversi.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Blood and Roses, spring/summer 2015; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Rovers.
Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). 18th-Century Punk, autumn/winter 2016–17; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Roversi.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). 18th-Century Punk, autumn/winter 2016–17; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Roversi.
Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Inside Decoration, autumn/winter 2010–11; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Craig McDean.
Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Cubisme, spring/summer 2007; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Craig McDean.
Launch gallery
Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Courtesy of the Met. Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). The Infinity of Tailoring, autumn/winter 2013–14; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Collier Schorr. Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Blue Witch, spring/summer 2016; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by Paolo Roversi.