‘Beauty doesn’t have to be pretty’: iconic designer Kawakubo honored
Print Edition
TWISTS, knots, curls and folds: the fantastical, boundary-pushing creations of legendary designer Rei Kawakubo explore the space where fashion ends and art begins.
The Japanese designer, who founded the esteemed Comme des Garcons fashion house in 1969, is being honored at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art with an exhibition featuring half a century of her creations.
It is the first monographic show at the museum’s Costume Institute dedicated to a living designer since Yves Saint Laurent, the French legend who put women in trousers and tuxedo jackets, in 1983.
The exhibition “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between,” which runs through September 4, displays more than 140 designs spanning the early 1980s to today.
A svelte and graceful figure, Kawakubo last Monday was the honored guest and inspiration at the annual fashion gala held at the Met, wearing her signature blunt bangs and displaying her trademark sphinxlike reserve.
A woman of few words, the 74-year-old almost never gives interviews, and refuses to discuss the meaning of her work.
Her creations, however, are as audacious as she is demure.
The designer’s oft-quoted phrase, “for something to be beautiful, it doesn’t have to be pretty,” sums up her approach.
In the guide that accompanies the exhibition, she offers another perspective: “I work around the figure, but I am never limited by what the figure has to be.”
“The history of fashion has yielded only a handful of designers who are not only masters at their work but who can also define or redefine the aesthetics of our time. And Rei is one of these,” said Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute.
“Season after season, collection after collection, she changes our eye while upending perceived notion of beauty,” he added. “If anything, her work makes the art versus fashion debate redundant.”
Comme des Garcons focuses on asymmetry, imbalance and the form and structure of the garment, often relegating the wearer to the background.
Sometimes, the silhouette of a woman is altogether altered by a protruding bustle around the posterior, asymmetry or body ligatures.
Museum director Thomas Campbell said Kawakubo’s creations are very much at home in the Met, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious museums. “Her creations often look like sculpture, challenging our idea of the place of fashion in contemporary culture,” he said.
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