COMME des GARÇONS Presentation Paris RTW

Some might say Rei Kawakubo‘s work resembles jokes, but her designs are more like fashion cartoons. Each and every look amounts to an iconic, unforgettable style with a cheeky and intellectual twist: contorted patterns and bimorphic silhouettes, ad hoc arrangements of disheveled stuff; architectural fragments of textiles done in vivid kaleidoscopic colors; anarchical draping that makes you hallucinate. In short, her fashion almost seems too much to take in and resists aesthetic metabolism.

But the impact of her ultra-disciplined and mischievous oeuvre doesn’t dissipate after it smacks you in the face and leaves you hungry for more. Entitled “The Infinity of Tailoring,” her Fall ’13 range celebrated the classic lounge suit. Done in houndstooth and pinstripe and leaping from medium to medium in madly unexpected ways, Kawakubo’s collection brimmed with an odd, awesome energy. She paired tailored trousers/skirts with sculptural, voluminous coats, vests and head-pieces that had echoes of unisex costumes—even harlequin garb—with wild ornaments and mind-bending contrasts. Colossal lollypop swirls mixed with exquisite rosettes and warped darts made for disorienting but beautiful ensembles. Her clothing propositions—crafted from silk wools and lux gabardine with psychedelic prints—were worn like sprawling art installations that the models, ever so graceful, had to calculate precisely where and when to strut and pivot to avoid collisions on the runway.

Rei Kawakubo is the originator of her own form of anarchical-sartorial mayhem, always thoughtful and disciplined, and always executed in ways audiences deem provocative and utterly other-ish, highly carnivalesque, operatic, and infinitely unrelenting.

COMME des GARÇONS is brilliant!