rei kawakubo inspiration

One may have such yearnings at any age, and Kawakubo was into her thirties when she met the love of her youth, Yohji Yamamoto. But sympathy and compliments both annoy her, perhaps because they rub salt into the incurable and necessary wound of her discontent. In the workplace, Kawakubo’s laconic detachment—the refusal to explain herself—forces her employees, particularly the pattern cutters, to look inward, rather than to her, for a revelation of the all-important “something new.” Tanaka says, “The work is very hard, and I have to delve deep into my own understanding because her words are so few. Kawakubo ennobled poor materials and humbled rich ones, which were sent off to be reëducated in the same work camp with elasticated synthetics and bonded polyester. A new minimalism is here, the fashion bylines say. For some years in between, he and Kawakubo were “travelling companions,” as Kiyokazu Washida coyly puts it in an essay he contributed to Yamamoto’s book, “Talking to Myself,” a sumptuous pictorial chronicle of the designer’s career which was published in 2002. Even when creating her latest collections of “not clothes,” the elaborate methods of construction frequently draw on tailoring traditions and dressmaking tactics. cookie policy. Moving away from the traditional definition of clothes, in the end, enabled her to create something unprecedented. [Photo Credits: While the crows may have loved her concepts, Comme des Garcons was not immediately accepted by the fashion crowd, who simply didn’t get her concept, and was accused of being ‘post-atomic’ with political undertones. Her mother was trained as an English teacher—Kawakubo understands and speaks the language better than she lets on—and when the children were of a certain age she wanted to work. There are few women who have exerted more influence on the history of modern fashion, and the most obvious, Chanel, is in some respects her perfect foil: the racy courtesan who invented a uniform of irreproachable chic and the gnomic shaman whose anarchic chic is a reproach to uniformity. … By exaggerating the female form, hiding the body beneath layers of fabric and ultimately rendering its actual physical attributes all but meaningless, her designs challenge conventional beauty standards and deflect the male gaze. Their cut had the rigor, if not the logic, of modernist architecture, but loose flaps, queer trains, and other sometimes perplexing extrusions encouraged a client of the house to improvise her own style of wearing them. Small talk—indeed any talk—is not Kawakubo’s forte. In fact, legend has it that her first boutique in Tokyo didn’t even have mirrors. I made different versions of it.” Their chicest detail may have been the Comme des Garçons label, typeset in a font created by Kawakubo, with a star for the cedilla, which hasn’t changed. In the 1980s, the color black quickly became synonymous with Kawakubo’s aesthetic. In an age of designer-celebrity-saturation and overexposure, the fact Kawakubo has refused to bow at the end of any of her shows for decades is, possibly, the most punk gesture of all. For commercial reasons, she says, she started sizing the clothes and narrowing the gap between dress and body. Many shows later, Comme des Garcons had become synonymous with the avant garde and had made its mark on the fashion world, who had come to expect unique concepts and statements about the state of the industry to be shown through Kawakubo’s work. “Even in those days, she had an aura,” Tanaka says, “and I asked a friend if she knew her name, because I wanted to meet her.”, Sudjic writes, “Kawakubo’s experiences as a stylist had taught her the importance of creating a coherent identity”—a philosophy of design that is followed as strictly in the company’s Christmas cards as it is in the flagship stores. Left: The Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Men are equally liberated from the narrow confines of shapes and garments available to them and offered a broader, more playful range of fashion statements to choose from. “It refers to a small group of like-minded spirits at odds with the majority. Sudjic relates a few anodyne details about Kawakubo’s girlhood (that she bunched her socks down as a revolt against the conformity of her school uniform, for example). To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. And, even if I could, why would I want to? Soothe your skin with these masks from the experts (and a few DIY blends), The height of summer has arrived, and the trends of the season do not disappoint. Last but not least, the fact that Kawakubo remains in control of the company she founded, refusing all offers from outside investors, speaks volumes in a fashion landscape where women are not always in charge creatively, even less financially. However, Kawakubo’s gender-equalising philosophy runs a lot deeper than that. Tsubomi Tanaka, who is Comme des Garçons’ chief of production, has been with her almost from the beginning. Your email address will not be published. By 1980, Comme des Garçons had a hundred and fifty franchised shops across Japan, eighty employees, and annual revenues of thirty million dollars.

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