Rei Kawakubo news and archive

Fashion beyond the binary

If you've ever seen a Comme des Garçons fashion show, it is unlikely that you raced to order one of Rei Kawakubo's catwalk looks, which are mostly steeped in abstract notions and avant-garde constructivism. Yet it is in the ever-evolving landscape of style, and what we have come to expect of fashion, that we find ourselves trapped in false...

People

Rei Kawakubo honoured during London Design Festival

Rei Kawakubo has been honoured at the London Design Festival with the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Medal, an achievement recognising the Japanese designer for her “significant and fundamental contributions to the design industry” throughout her career. Alongside three other medal recipients, she was selected by a panel of designers, industry...

Podcast

Podcast: Michelle Elie discusses collecting designer streetwear fashion

In this edition of Fashion Your Seatbelt, American-Haitian born jewelry designer and former model, Michelle Elie expresses her love of avant-garde fashion designer, Rei Kawakubo. Elie collects, and regularly wears, pieces Kawakubo designed for her Comme des Garçons brand. In this podcast the designer discusses why she loves streetstyle and the...

Podcast

Michelle Elie -The Fearless Fashion Collector

Michelle Elie is an American-Haitian jewelry designer and former fashion model. She is many times captured by the lens of street style photographers at Paris Fashion Week shows and that is because she is a passionate fan of Rei Kawakubo designs for her brand Comme des Garçons. In fact, she is a collector of the garments from Kawakubo. She...

Video

Art of the In-Between: Rei Kawakubo at The Met

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between was the museum’s first monographic exhibition on a living designer since Yves Saint Laurent in 1983. “Season after season, collection after collection, she upends conventional notions of beauty and disrupts accepted characteristics of the fashionable body,” said curator Andrew Bolton. “Her...

Video

Video: Who Is Rei Kawakubo? | The Leader Of The Comme Des Garçons Universe

An introduction to the legendary japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, the founder of Comme Des Garcons (CdG) & Dover Street Market. Source: Youtube, The Fashion Archive

Video

Video: Antifashion of the 90s

In the 90s emerges a wave: the antifashion trend. The deconstruction and material recycling shook the fashion world of glitzy sequins and has created an utterly different aesthetics, which current designers are still borrowing analogies from 20 years on. Source: Youtube, Rei

Retail

In Pictures: Dover Street Market opens Los Angeles store

Four years after its debut in London, Dover Street Market has opened its sixth location in Los Angeles. The concept store, founded by Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe, is best known for its resemblance with an art gallery. Designed by Kawakubo herself, the LA location spans over 15,000 square feet and features corners...

Fashion Featured

Exploring Japan's influence on global fashion

Japan’s bountiful visual culture has long been a place to take inspiration from. The futuristic yet traditional culture has become a fascination among western communities, translating into our creative industries, particularly fashion. Described as “another planet” by trend watcher, Ronny de Vylder, the Japanese believe in everything they do,...