Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between
“It’s a Met show for Comme des Garçons, not a Comme des Garçons show at the Met” commented Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons regarding the upcoming exhibition.
‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between’ by the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will be held from May 4 to September 4, 2017. Divided into nine themes - Absence/Presence, Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-fashion, Model/Multiple, High/Low, Then/Now, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes, the total of 150 looks from 1981 Paris debut era to the present will be on display.
Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Jemal
Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo is an elusive figure, she has never offered detailed descriptions for her designs and insists that the only way to know her is “through [her] clothes” and her company is called Comme des Garçons because she likes the way it sounds.
Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe
According to previous interviews and articles, we know that Kawakubo is an ‘angry’ person (“In general, I am always angry,” said Kawakubo to Vogue’s Suzy Menkes), Adrian Joffe, the designer’s husband, is not afraid of Kawakubo “but she can be dictatorial, and I’m sometimes scared of the way she might treat people” and is a punk in the eyes of Stephen Jones.
Prior to the first monographic exhibition of a living fashion designer at The Met since 1983’s Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, there was the Met Gala. This year’s dress code was avant-garde but how did celebrities like Selena Gomez play the dress code? - safely. The low number of Comme des Garçons garments on the red carpet was bit disappointing but this isn’t the typical Hollywood label anyway and the designer is known for never paying or endorsing celebrities to wear her clothes. The attendees who fashioned Comme des Garçons on the red carpet are worth taking a look though.
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