20110501

Unlimited: Comme des garcons


The world of couture was a traditional and perfect one. It was a fine craftsmanship. Ms. Kawakubo simply destroyed that image. She made amazing clothes that were deconstructed, washed, torn, boiled and dyed. So I think for all generation of students at fashion school, it was a single unique revolution. She is “a designer for designers.  
Maria Luisa,  Poumaillou owner,  Maria Luisa

I think in 1983, Ms. Kawakubo has already proposed some unfinished clothes that were very important and valuable. She was the first to make people understand that clothes do not have to be completely finished, and that they could be very beautiful when it’s made to look old by some artifical means. And I think that is at the center of today’s fashion. She has invented a new fashion way of speech that has become a permanent tendency. Many designer and creators have been influence by her. 
Didier Grumbach, president French federation of haute couture, ready-to –wear and designer.

I have only done what I found to be beautiful at the time. And there was a big backlash against this. Almost for the first time, I learned that beautiful things for me are not necessarily beautiful to everyone else, but they could well be something very scary. That, as a result, inflamed me to go on and simulated my following creations. I would never be content making garments everyone else finds beautiful. Instead, I became defiant asking people why they don’t understand this. 
Rei Kawakubo


Something may be annoying you at the moment, or you may think something is wrong with the world. These feelings could become an ingredient for my creation. It means that even things-yet-to-have-form could possibly be designed. You feel something; a variety of factors influences each other; overlap each other or are created through a aeries of accidents. It is something that comes about from the sequence. It could also be anger, a motivation for new ideas, or a desire to make strangely shaped clothes. 
Rei Kawakubo

Just defining new lines and making paper patterns is not design. Although designing a silhouette used to be enough, design will be more than that from now on. 
Rei Kawakubo

After extensive searching and thinking out for new ideas, just before time ran out, I realised that the clothes could be the body and the body could be the clothes. This was an idea for possible new clothes. I then started to design the body. I didn’t expect them to be easy garments to be worn everyday, but Comme des Garcons’ clothes should always be new to the world and inspiring. It is more important, I think, to translate thought into action rather than to worry about if one’s clothes are worn in the end. This is probably why the collection stimulated strong feelings in many people.
Rei Kawakubo

To both click with the feeling of the times and also be stimulating in your design is probably the best. Even if your garment sell, it would be boring to make clothes that were not exciting, I become very happy when people who don’t actually wear Comme des garcons tell me that they are emotionally touched or excited by just touching our clothes. When our clothes can make a strong impression to those who are only looking, I realise that clothes can do something. 
Rei Kawakubo 

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