Introduction
Since its founding in 1969, Rei Kawakubo’s Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons has transformed the way we think about fashion, placing it squarely among the most potent players on the international stage. Comme des Garçons has reshaped the fashion landscape over and over with its avant-garde designs, deconstructed silhouettes, and boundary-pushing aesthetics, upending accepted ideas of beauty, identity, and the clothes we wear. Its distinctive design philosophy, coupled with its rigorous commitment to creativity, has garnered it a great deal of fervent fans, and has etched the brand’s name as a touchstone for high fashion.
2018 In the Cut YouTube Channel Video
Comme des Garçons was born in Tokyo, where its founder, the famous designer Rei Kawakubo, graduated from Bunka Fashion College, commedesgarconsofficials.us one of Japan’s leading fashion schools. She started at the Japanese department store but soon branched out to create her line. Kawakubo’s fashion sensibility was the reverse of what was on offer in the industry at the time. It was just at a time when most fashion designers were making at least clothes that were traditional, polished, and form-fitting; Kawakubo was making experimental clothes that pushed against their patterns and silhouettes.
First Collection For Comme des Garçons
And her first collection for Comme des Garçons, which she presented in Paris in 1981, shocked and awed. With its lopsided cuts and raw edges and oversized proportions, the collection was a bid in direct opposition to the polished, elegant lines of Western fashion. But it was just this break from the pack that some fashion insiders noticed, and would eventually plant the stake for Comme des Garçons as a label that would point fashion in a new direction for the decade(s) to come.
THE COMME des GARÇONS GESTURE
A keystone of Comme des Garçons’ success is its role in innovation. The brand’s aesthetic is characterized by deconstruction, asymmetry, and quirky fabric treatment. Kawakubo long since embraced the concept of “anti-fashion” here, opting to step outside the whims of fashion houses — there always, perhaps, existing the clothes of clothes which make one question what the hell clothes are supposed to do. Her collections frequently feature atypical textiles, complex layers, and designs not easily typecast. This position has made Comme des Garçons simultaneously a paragon of artistry and a lodestar for outsiders looking to upend the establishment.
In fact, for many, beauty is reimagined by Comme des Garçons, toppling notions of symmetry, harmony, and shape. The design ethos of unusual proportions and deliberately unflattering silhouettes is an antidote to much of the fashion world’s obsession with perfection. By resisting traditional ideals of beauty, Comme des Garçons teaches its wearer a radical kind of beauty, allowing them to live unapologetically, with all of their flawed grandeur, free from the mindless anxiety of judgment.
Collaborations and Expansions
Over the decades, Comme des Garçons has expanded its horizons beyond its properties with mindful partnerships and collaborations with brands, as well as artists and industries across the spectrum. Some of the most high-profile collaborations: with Nike, and the fashion house reforming its sneakers into its trademark avant-garde shapes. These collaborations have allowed the trademark aesthetic and reflection of the brand’s message to be shared among a wider audience, but remain exclusive and creative.
Along with collaborations, Comme des Garçons expanded on its product range, putting out a slew of sub-labels, from Comme des Garçons Homme and Comme des Garçons Homme Plus to Comme des Garçons SHIRT. Each label touches on a different aspect of the brand’s overall philosophy while keeping to the core tenets of creativity and nonconformity, from menswear to lower-priced ranges. Comme des Garçons also extended its reach to homeware and fragrance, sealing its position as one of its era’s most polymathic cultural forces.
Cultural Impact and Legacy
Mais Comme des Garçons is gigantic on the runway, and even bigger in terms of how people take a lot of things about fashion in general. The brand’s talent for questioning social codes while presenting fashion as an artistic discipline has resonated with the fashion elite and everyday shoppers alike. Kawakubo’s legacy has opened doors for thousands of designers, artists, and creators to push the bounds of their imagination, and the shadow of Comme des Garçons continues to leaven what’s ahead for fashion.
And beyond its aesthetic innovations, Comme des Garçons Shirts has been pivotal in nurturing another notion of luxury, one based in artistry and individual expression (although also in its abstractions of money and exclusivity). So much of it is an antithesis to the commercialism of the fashion business — a husband-and-wife-run shop that espouses a less commercial and more personal, conceptual approach to design. And the brand’s longevity and norm-defying relevance speak to the power of creativity and its ability to upend industries.
Comme des Garçons’ Unknown Future
As one provocative piece of Comme des Garçons futurism looks down the pipe, its commitment to always innovating shows no sign of stagnating. Under the direction of Rei Kawakubo, we already know that the house is going to keep pushing both the industry and its audience with new ideas and concepts that run the gamut from the challenging to the whimsical. Whether it is through challenging the very ideals that govern beauty or reinventing the essence of fabric, there will always be a place for Comme des Garçons to carve up the future aesthetic of design.
After all, at the end of the day, Comme des Garçons is a lot more than a fashion label; it is a craft of construction that interrogates the way we regard beauty, identity, ambience and meaning placed in garments. Through its playfulness and spirit of rebellion, Comme des Garçons has uplifted those who want fashion not to just respond to trends but to break free of them and become new in line with the human heat and always searching for cleavage.