My theory about the work of Rei Kawakubo has evolved over several seasons of being intermittently assigned by Vogue Runway to review Commes des Garçons in Paris . This theory is a kind of survival strategy that has proved invaluable in overcoming the queasy, anxious, and borderline uncomfortable feeling that hits me immediately after every single show. No other designer’s shows spark this specific-to-Kawakubo sensation, because there is no other designer whose work so comprehensively resists what the Vogue Runway assignment demands - which is to shape some at least semi-convincing and explanatory sense of it.
Most shows are relatively straightforward to communicate in words, because the collections they showcase are designed to be an answer - an answer to some need, want, or value that lives inside the person who will buy and wear them. Most collections are an attempt to build a form of wearable certainty. For most fashion designers, being able to do that represents creative success, and creative identity .
But what makes Commes des Garçons so uniquely challenging to review - at least according to my survival-strategy of a theory - is that where everyone else strives to design answers, Rei Kawakubo designs questions. Since 1969, when she founded Commes des Garçons, Kawakubo has comprehensively eluded categorisation. Sure, she is unquestionably Japan’s most revered fashion designer - yet she typically terms herself as a “businesswoman”.
Her work is most often con.