Following the success of the London outpost – now relocated to a heritage-listed building on Haymarket – the team opened a second hub in Ginza, Tokyo, two years later. “I’m sorry,” he says, and for a moment I suspect he may have forgotten I was present. Five years ago, her Not Making Clothes catwalk show for Comme des Garçons included a model dressed in a cage of black strips of fabric and a lurid pink teddy which half-hid the wearer behind a riot of frills. What's your process? I studied ethics at university, never studied fashion. The stores continue to be the hippest square feet in the hippest cities in the world, and are redesigned each season by Kawakubo herself.


True to Kawakubo’s reputation, she kept her answers short.

It's a real sort of guild. The starting point is just talking. Elle se montre peu, s’exprime encore moins, n’accorde pratiquement aucune photo, ni aucune interview… Un mystère qui ne manque évidemment pas d’entretenir le mythe.

Rei Kawakubo: “I always think that clothes are really valuable for people to wear and see. The dress code, for men and women, revolves around black trousers, oversized shirting and chunky flatform sandals; hair is either cut short or twisted into a messy knot. She experimented with not having mirrors in her dressing rooms, so clients could focus on the feeling of the clothes.

Her ambition was never to become a designer. The very, very first thing that I wanted was to make a living—be independent and have a job. I just wear the things I make," she said.

Car, plus de quarante ans après le lancement de Comme des Garçons, cette marque très à part faisant l’objet d’un authentique culte, Rei Kawakubo est toujours l’une des figures les plus vénérées de la création (le meilleur terme que l’on ait trouvé, vu qu’elle dit ne faire ni mode, ni art). You are the only one who thinks like this.” She says something else, quieter this time. (Photographs of her are famously limited.) This was elucidated nowhere more directly than by Rei Kawakubo herself in an interview with AnOther Magazine. I started with wanting to think about witches, about strong women who have special powers—who are often misunderstood. Her conceptual clothes, mostly black and often tattered with holes, were an affront to the sexy, body-conscious fashions of the time—such as Mugler and Montana. Adrian Joffe: Most people have a kind of style, a personal style.

Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. If anything I avoid any reference points. Read on for an edited transcript of our interview with Rei Kawakubo: Eleanor Gibson: Firstly, congratulations on the award. When you have a group, you have a leader who is going to put down the rest of the group.
While in New York to accept 2019’s Isamu Noguchi Award, Rei Kawakubo granted WWD a rare interview. He translated for his wife and at times answered for her. "I want to think outside of the box in order to make something new," she said.

In a sense, this is the total expression of who she is, because she has been doing it so long and because there is no team. C’est de plus en plus dur au fil des ans.Redoutez-vous toujours la collection à venir ?Toute nouvelle collection m’effraie.Êtes-vous sensible aux critiques ?Non. Not just in fashion. "It's nothing about clothes, it's a different way to express my value of Comme des Garçons," she explained. Kawakubo once described her work as similar to Zen ‘koans’, unsolvable puzzles set by Buddhist teachers.

I lead it and direct it and inspire it. Comment vous qualifiez-vous, dans ce cas ?Comme une travailleuse.

I want to keep on continuing it.

Rei equals Comme des Garçons. It also began to influence a new generation of designers—especially the Antwerp Six—who were looking for ways to reflect what they saw as a spectrum of societal woes, from greed and sexism to corruption, military power structures, and xenophobia. Welcome to Interview Magazine. In the beginning, there isn't even a theme. It was also never wanting to be part of any group or movement or anything that was the done thing.

Kawakubo said that, ever since she established the brand in Tokyo back in 1969, she has always had creative control. Mon sentiment est que vous n’avez pas envie que votre travail soit trop facilement compris. So she has to find a new method to come at the work. Her runway collections veer from Edward Scissorhands–meets–Victoriana mourning gowns one season to cartoon caricatures of gauze-wrapped mummies the next, with a Dada-esque wedding dress here and a rockabilly rebel-with-a-cause there, all of which, she will tell you, are strictly journalists' projections and interpretations. Photo: top et pantalon asymétriques agrémentés de noeuds, collants noirs, chaussures en PVC à semelle noire. Vogue Meets The Whitehall Women Fighting To Keep Us Safe, The Common Signs That Say You’ve Hit Career Burnout – And How To Overcome It, Aurora James Is Writing A Memoir, Illuminating Her Life, Career & A New Path For Women.

Est-ce votre sentiment ? Kawakubo’s high concept designs are deliberately challenging. Twenty years ago, it was easier to make new things than it is now. For more details, please see our privacy notice.

I am examining a necklace made from a toothy anatomical model of a dog’s jaw when Joffe arrives to usher me into Kawakubo’s office.

With its poured concrete floors, pop-up artist collaborations and guerrilla events, DSM was a decade ahead of the rest of the industry. Today the showroom is lined with men’s clothing: trousers in puckered candy stripes, a lurid lilac suit, ripped-out halves of contrasting sweaters melded into one garment. Here, Kawakubo reveals the commitment to originality, imagination, and innovation—for true fashion followers, manna from heaven—that makes her tick. The reason they gave me this award is probably because they detect a kindred spirit between myself and Noguchi. Then I found some beautiful blue fabric, so I made Blue Witches. Read more: Vogue Meets The Whitehall Women Fighting To Keep Us Safe, "The people who make that kind of distinction of whether you’re a feminist or not a feminist are already the problem. You are the only one who doesn’t think about it.

She then spotted an empty coffee cup and appeared concerned, asking Joffe if it had been left over from a previous meeting.

Five years ago, her.

But the baroque excess of draped and sculpted fabric, combined with exuberant feather plumes, gives the experiment an out-of-this-world attitude, especially when punctuated by startling misshapen incarnadine wigs by hairstylist and longtime Comme collaborator Julien d'Ys.

In a (comparatively) chipper mood, the …

It is difficult to recount an encounter with Kawakubo without sounding either as if you are sending her up, or as if you are po-faced and tone deaf to absurdity. Kawakubo was in New York last week to receive the 2019 Isamu Noguchi Award, an annual prize given to an artist and designer with a "spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and commitment to east/west cultural exchange", in line with the work of late Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. She invented black as the colour of the urban creative, she liberated high fashion from vanity, and she did all of this in laceratingly original catwalk shows. Il est clair que vous ne vous contentez pas de créer des vêtements : vous essayez de susciter des émotions.

She studied the history of aesthetics—both Japanese and Western—at Keio University, worked in advertising for a spell at a textile company, and then started working as a freelance stylist in 1967. I am not here to ask Rei Kawakubo about clothes, because she no longer makes them, though this hasn’t stopped her continuing to be probably the most important fashion designer in the world. Joffe is Kawakubo’s husband of 25 years, business partner of 31, and her Man on Earth, through whom she communicates with the non-Japanese-speaking world. It’s a natural process of business. In everything. "It's the only brand in the world that works like that A-Z," she said. Ce qui me met, de fait, en marge de l’univers de la mode.