Comme des Garçons

Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind fashion designer label Comme des Garçons, was born in Tokyo, Japan. In 1964 She graduated from college after studying fine arts and literature at Keio University in Tokyo. Shortly after her studies, Rei Kawakubo worked under the Japanese textile designer Asahi Kasei and in 1966 Rei Kawakubo became a free lance fashion designer.

Three years later, Rei Kawakubo established her own company in Tokyo, which she decided to name "Comme des Garcons" which in French means "Like the boys". Although she did not initially intend to make only boys clothing, she enjoyed the sound of this French name. In 1978 she added a men's clothing line to her label, which she called "Homme". The men's line proved also extremely popular.

In 1980 Rei Kawakubo moved to Paris where she set up a salon in order to present her first collection which she managed to carry out in 1981. She also opened a Comme des Garçons boutique shortly afterwards.

Kawakubo achieved her greatest attention in Paris during the late 1970's and early 1980's with her non-traditional clothing, which attempted to redefine some formerly accepted ideas. Her torn and crumpled garments, draped around the body with seemingly no acknowledgement of any kind of body shape, were first reviewed as unattractive and ridiculous. Nevertheless, her sombre shades and flat unisex image, had a considerable impact on some of the dress styles of the 1980's.

Comme des Garcons specialized in mostly in anti-fashion; meaning austere, sometimes deconstructed garments, sometimes lacking a sleeve or any other component. Her garments were all primarily black. However she said "there are many blacks, not only one kind of black, each black has a shade existing within it." She meant that black can often have a blue, a purple or a red reflection or even some grey in it.

The collection was dubbed by the fashion writers as "Hiroshima chic" and it managed to achieve two things. It put black in the forefront, which was until then, a very unpopular colour, and it revised notions of the body by obscuring the silhouette with shapeless irregularly perforated boiled wools.

In 1982 Rei Kawakubo designed a "tear illusion" dress  which resembled the one designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930's. However, Kawakubo only teased the viewer with the possibility of a torn garment, and respected the full integrity of the material.

A year later, Kawakubo introduced a successful furniture line and also received the Mainichi Newspaper Fashion award. She opened her first New York boutique for Comme des Garçons in 1986. During the same year, Rei Kawakubo exhibited her fashion photographs at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, France. She also was honoured to receive the Night of the Stars Award in New York.

In 1987, the Fashion Institute of Technology, U.S.A., honoured Rei Kawakubo again as one of the main and leading women designers of the 20th century. An exhibition was held, along with clothes by Madeleine Vionnet and Claire McCardell.

By the late 1980's Comme des Garcons operated more than 300 shops throughout the world. A fourth of these stores were also located outside Japan.

Rei Kawakubo is the only owner of Comme des Garcons. She is said to have always kept responsibility for all the artistic and business issues of her company, and economic information on the Kawakubo empire is kept very secret and always most difficult to obtain.

Comme des Garcons' clothing output is said to outnumber the combined effort of Japanese competitors Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake by far since in 1990 sales were of $ 100 million.

After successfully entering the markets outside Japan, Kawakubo also began to manufacture abroad. Production is concentrated in France in order to avoid trade barriers for Japanese products and maintain competitiveness with European designers.

Junya Watanabe was a designer at Comme des Garçons, a protégé of Rei Kawakubo, who later started out by himself. He still creates many designs for the Comme des Garçons label.

The Style of Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons

Kawakubo has attracted many clients who have the self confidence to wear her clothing, which is radically different from the everyday trends. Following her sensational start in Paris, Kawakubo has been the subject of numerous clothing exhibitions around the world and has received a lot of acclaim. She always shuns trends and traditions in order to constantly be able to create something new.

Her main interest in colour, for the first 15 years or so of her career, was black. She explored every aspect of the different ways of using black. In the later 1980's however, her clothes began to lighten up. White tended to appear and even very bright colours. In the 1990's she also used the sheer transparent look, soft flowing printed fabrics and went even more towards some very youthful wearability.

Asymmetry has also been a very big favourite of Rei Kawakubo's. Her incisive cuts serve as an equivalent to line and the torso as one of the fundamental elements of the silhouette. Kawakubo's designs are a delight in the modernistic "shock of the' new" and seizes upon some advanced kinds of technology for creation using man made fabrics which are created out of understanding of fashion's historical role.

Her designs have inspired many other new designers, such as the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela, along with very chic Austrian designer Helmut Lang.

Comme des Garçons is specially famous for its lace sweaters and the visual principle of the shredded and worn garment that can still maintain the essential integrity of the fabric. If there is to be lace in the 21st century, it will surely be garments made with Kawakubo's vision of the ultra elegant web.

Find fashion by Rei Kawakubo @ the following eshops: