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There was a gasp in the audience gathered. Inside the vast 18th century École des Beaux Arts a model emerged from the wood plank wearing a black double breasted jumpsuit dripping with sparkling beaded fringe, a zig-zag cutout revealing an opening at the waist with matching leggings and violet lettering cramped together to start the Comme des Garçons spring show. The model walked to a slow and heavy Tom Waits’ songs.
Over the last ten seasons Rei Kawakubo had favored the showing of concepts and perhaps the idea of clothes rather than actual ready to wear garments. It took a major readjustment of our senses to this new shocker of seeing an actual garment. However once the eyes adjusted, each look contained meanings for the audience to freely interpret.
In a longer than usual statement for the show, rather than the often one or two words, the designer stated that she no longer considered the approach over the past five years new and was looking but could not find a new way forward. “What I thought of in the end was a profoundly internal approach… not about outwardly evident design and expression but about the design of content, about what’s deep inside… free of design on the surface.” The designer continued that it is a risk to do things in the same way and to change things but she opted for the latter. The end of the abstract forms of fashion is by no means the end of enmeshing meaning and narratives into the garments by letting the clothes tell the actual story.
Interpreting each Comme des Garçons show is a highly individual enterprise as each member of the audience may react differently to the show and the ‘clothes’ shown. Perhaps this show was surely about the designer’s own life portrayed through the thirty outfits. From the initial fringed jumpsuit to the last look, a black satin double breasted coat with a long twisted train and a very large bump that heavily protruded out in front, requiring it to be held by the model’s hands. The bumps covered in either the CDG logo and printed leggings grew both larger and more uneven and progressed around the body to the back end or to the hips for demonstrating perhaps the different stages of the body’s aging process.
What can one say about those heavy steel floor length chains underneath the sheer printed jumpsuits and the cropped bolero with the chains flowing out the bottom and the sleeves? Is it an indication of the burden of being a woman in modern society considering the current social and political upsurge of women’s issues at the forefront and the debate of ongoing societal transformations? Is it the burden of the designer’s insistence upon the freedom and the independence to do her creative work while sustaining and growing a global business? Is it the personal burden of being a woman and that each woman who look at these two outfits can relate to the clothes in their own personal manner?
Beyond these personal interpretations, there were so many products that can go straight to or be distilled into the variety of commercial products in the Comme des Garçons multi-brand brand. Most of the clothes shown this time required little alterations for retail – the gray flare coat, the wool jumpsuits, many versions of coats, those logo leggings and more, and surely the Nike Vapormaxes with the silver chains. It was an outstanding show of art and commerce.
![Alt Text]()
There was a gasp in the audience gathered. Inside the vast 18th century École des Beaux Arts a model emerged from the wood plank wearing a black double breasted jumpsuit dripping with sparkling beaded fringe, a zig-zag cutout revealing an opening at the waist with matching leggings and violet lettering cramped together to start the Comme des Garçons spring show. The model walked to a slow and heavy Tom Waits’ songs.
Over the last ten seasons Rei Kawakubo had favored the showing of concepts and perhaps the idea of clothes rather than actual ready to wear garments. It took a major readjustment of our senses to this new shocker of seeing an actual garment. However once the eyes adjusted, each look contained meanings for the audience to freely interpret.
In a longer than usual statement for the show, rather than the often one or two words, the designer stated that she no longer considered the approach over the past five years new and was looking but could not find a new way forward. “What I thought of in the end was a profoundly internal approach… not about outwardly evident design and expression but about the design of content, about what’s deep inside… free of design on the surface.” The designer continued that it is a risk to do things in the same way and to change things but she opted for the latter. The end of the abstract forms of fashion is by no means the end of enmeshing meaning and narratives into the garments by letting the clothes tell the actual story.
Interpreting each Comme des Garçons show is a highly individual enterprise as each member of the audience may react differently to the show and the ‘clothes’ shown. Perhaps this show was surely about the designer’s own life portrayed through the thirty outfits. From the initial fringed jumpsuit to the last look, a black satin double breasted coat with a long twisted train and a very large bump that heavily protruded out in front, requiring it to be held by the model’s hands. The bumps covered in either the CDG logo and printed leggings grew both larger and more uneven and progressed around the body to the back end or to the hips for demonstrating perhaps the different stages of the body’s aging process.
What can one say about those heavy steel floor length chains underneath the sheer printed jumpsuits and the cropped bolero with the chains flowing out the bottom and the sleeves? Is it an indication of the burden of being a woman in modern society considering the current social and political upsurge of women’s issues at the forefront and the debate of ongoing societal transformations? Is it the burden of the designer’s insistence upon the freedom and the independence to do her creative work while sustaining and growing a global business? Is it the personal burden of being a woman and that each woman who look at these two outfits can relate to the clothes in their own personal manner?
Beyond these personal interpretations, there were so many products that can go straight to or be distilled into the variety of commercial products in the Comme des Garçons multi-brand brand. Most of the clothes shown this time required little alterations for retail – the gray flare coat, the wool jumpsuits, many versions of coats, those logo leggings and more, and surely the Nike Vapormaxes with the silver chains. It was an outstanding show of art and commerce.
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