The Comme des Garçons "Universe"

[interest1]

Readying for the runway



1987





Ten years later, Alexander McQueen walks Rei's FW97 menswear runway
as Which One of These Things is Not Like the Other blasts from the speakers.



Alexander McQueen, opening CDG menswear FW 1997


Ok, that last part isn't true. But he did open the show. Go figure!

[nqth]

An interview with Rei Kawakubo at:

http://www.style.com/trendsshopping/stylenotes/040113_Style_Print_Rei_Kawakubo_Comme_Des_Garcons/

Chaos Theory
Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons says she isn't out to break the rules. That doesn't mean she hasn't left plenty of them crumbled in her wake
Interview by Matthew Schneier. Portrait by Mario Testino
Published April 4, 2013



MS: Do you believe there are rules in fashion? Do you consider yourself to be a rule breaker?

RK: I'm not interested in rules, or whether they are there or not. I do not consciously set out to break rules. I only make clothes that I myself feel are beautiful or good-looking. People maybe say that this way of feeling is against the rules.

MS: You've spoken occasionally about the constant need for newness in your work. Is newness the ultimate goal of design? How would you rank it relative to function and beauty?

RK: What new means to me is something that doesn't exist already and that I haven't seen before. The image I have made once is already no longer new to me, so you could say the goal is not to be found in eternity. Beauty and function are different things, but luckily they have a mutual connection. But the fundamental values around which I built CDG, i.e., creation and new, have no connection to beauty and function.

MS: Do you feel that the fashion industry has become too corporate?

RK: The corporateness of the fashion industry tends to take away or distort the freedom of creation.

MS: Comme des Garçons is an independent exception. What are the benefits of independence? What are the downsides?

RK: The benefit is that I am free, and I don't take notice of the downsides.

MS: Given the state of the fashion world today, do you think a designer could start out independently, as you did, and maintain that independence even while growing to a global scale? Is the world today as hospitable to designers as it was when you began?

RK: I think the fashion world has never been a comfortable, easy place to be in. I mean, in terms of always having to fight to be free to make what one wants.

MS: Where do you see the next great designer coming from?

RK: ???

MS: When you first decided to show in Paris, were you apprehensive about what the reaction would be? Did the reaction you received surprise you?

RK: I always had good reactions from people with a good eye and a vision…and very terrible reactions from those who are afraid of people who are different to others—at the beginning and even now. I have never worried about it too much.

MS: You are one of a handful of designers who generally prefer not to give interviews. Does fashion—either all fashion or your own fashion—lose something in the explanation?

RK: I don't like to explain the clothes, how I made them, the theme, et cetera. It's because the clothes are just as you see them and feel them. That's what I want…just see and feel them. How I thought about them, where any idea came from, what the process is, is not something I like talking about to people.

MS: You have a reputation for seriousness, but in private, I've heard it said that you are very funny. And your collections are distinguished in part by their wit. Is humor an important component of your work and your process?

RK: Nothing to do with the work. The path to making things is tough. The process allows no margin for being funny. It is like a hand-to-mouth world.

MS: You come to New York rarely, but you'll be traveling here more this year to design and then to unveil the newest Dover Street Market. What are your impressions of the city so far, relative to Tokyo or Paris?

RK: Nothing special. Wherever I go, my work is one…the same.

MS: At your Dover Street Market stores, you showcase the work of other designers as well as your own. Why is that important to you?

RK: I have always liked the idea of synergy and accident…the idea of sharing space with other creative people or people who have something to say. We call it beautiful chaos…anything can happen, nothing is decided.

MS: Fashion is taking another look at punk this year, as the subject of the annual Costume Institute exhibition. What does punk mean to you?

RK: The spirit of punk lies in not ingratiating oneself to preordained values nor accepting standard authority.

MS: Some have complained that fashion has stagnated; you yourself have said that the media has enabled uninteresting fashion to thrive. Can this situation change? What would allow that to happen?

RK: I doubt the situation can change. It's because in the world where money rules, the appreciation of the value of true creation is low.

MS: Are advertisers too powerful now in the way that they dictate fashion coverage?

RK: Yes.

MS: Your Fall 2012 "flat" collection has been incredibly influential, and many are noting elements of it reverberating through several Fall '13 collections. Are you aware of this borrowing? Do you consider imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or disappointing?

RK: I am not really aware of this and not too interested either.

MS: How would you like to be remembered?

RK: I want to be forgotten.

[Faust]

The last answer, sheer brilliance.

[interest1]

^ yup

Nuns. Who could have just one?


Comme des Garcons editorial, 1998

[interest1]

pure

SS12

[interest1]

[interest1]

Second, only to the lamb.

[Faye]

Just came across this article and thought about sharing it here:

http://global.genron.co.jp/2011/12/01/the-interior-design-of-comme-des-garcons/

Please excuse, if it's been posted before.

[underdog]

“Obviously, I have so much respect for that company. But more than learning my trade as a designer or how to marry creativity with business, do you know the most important thing I learned from Comme des Garçons? How to catch when a new kachikan (personal value system) is born and how to express it through fashion.”
- Chitose Abe

(from http://www.businessoffashion.com/201...instincts.html )

[underdog]

DSMNY now hiring...

http://newyork.doverstreetmarket.com/

Curious if anyone knows of an opening date?

[Faust]

End of December

[Bson]

They have already started interviewing, I think ;)

[Faust]

LONDON, United Kingdom — For Adrian Joffe, president of Comme des Garçons International and retail guru behind Dover Street Market — a shopping mecca in London’s Mayfair that’s part brand flagship, part luxury bazaar — building a fashion business is more like tending a garden than tuning an engine. “Rei Kawakubo created the company on the basic value of creation and everything else branches from that one root she planted. Creation stagnates without change. So you have to constantly grow and change, that is our goal. It’s natural, yet it’s also controlled.”....

Continue reading here

[bowyark]

Rei's Manifesto

Going around museums and galleries, seeing films, talking to people, seeing new shops, looking at silly magazines, taking an interest in the activities of people in the street, looking at art, travelling: all these things are not useful, all these things do not help me, do not give me any direct stimulation to help my search for something new. And neither does fashion history. The reason for that is that all these things above already exist.

I only can wait for the chance for something completely new to be born within myself.

The way I go about looking for this from within is to start with a provisional ‘theme.’ I make an abstract image in my head. I think paradoxically (oppositely) about patterns I have used before. I put parts of patterns where they don’t usually go. I break the idea of ‘clothes.’ I think about using for everything what one would normally use for one thing. Give myself limitations. I pursue a situation where I am not free. I think about a world of only the tiniest narrowest possibilities. I close myself. I think that everything about the way of making clothes hitherto is no good. This is the rule I always give myself: that nothing new can come from a situation that involves being free or that doesn’t involve suffering.

In order to make this SS14 collection, I wanted to change the usual route within my head. I tried to look at everything I look at in a different way. I thought a way to do this was to start out with the intention of not even trying to make clothes. I tried to think and feel and see as if I wasn’t making clothes.

— Rei Kawakubo, October 2013

[underdog]

The new outpost in their universe, DSMNY, opening 12/21/13.

Stocklist -

http://newyork.doverstreetmarket.com/together/index.html