The Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is undoubtedly one of the world's major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer to ever be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work exerts an extraordinary influence over succeeding generations of designers and is a major point of reference for all those wishing to explore the place of fashion in contemporary culture.
The 14 essays in this collection, written by eminent fashion theorists from around the world, ask what is the relationship of Kawakubo's work to art, philosophy and architecture, and ultimately illustrate how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.
Author(s): Rex Butler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: London
Cover
Contents
List of plates
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction: For and against fashion Rex Butler
1 Couture clash Akiko Fukai
2 The empire designs back Barbara Vinken
3 Rei Kawakubo as a retail format pioneer Karinna Grant and Kat Duffy
4 Rei Kawakubo: Agent provocateur in a hyper-glamourized world Llewellyn Negrin
5 Rei Kawakubo and the luxury of freedom Ory Bartal
6 Rei Kawakubo: Defiance personified Yuniya Kawamura
7 Exploring the theoretical meaning of Rei Kawakubo: Two waves of Japanese fashion in the West and Georg Simmel’s fashion dualism Tets Kimura
8 The subversively cute side of Comme des Garçons: Rei Kawakubo and romantic transgression Masafumi Monden
9 Breaking the idea of clothes: Rei Kawakubo’s fashion manifesto Karen de Perthuis
10 The complexity of Kawakubo: A radical form of consciousness Bronwyn Clark-Coolee
11 Between clothing and flesh: Kawakubo at the Met Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas
12 Kawakubo’s solipsism: The art of the in-between at the Met Amelia Winata
13 Rei Kawakubo: Fashion degree zero Rex Butler
Index
