Paris: The Comme des Garcons show was called for 5pm here, and well before that hour a smattering of guests slowly made their way through an airy building with sleek floors and a soaring glass atrium for the unveiling of the spring 2016 collection. The trickle of people moved down a staircase and around a corner and into a tiny corner in the bowels of the building with bare concrete walls and steel beams.
Sitting alongside a floor-level runway that was, perhaps, 50 feet long and barely three feet wide gave one a sense of both intimacy and claustrophobia. At a time when everything in fashion seems to be getting big — sets designed for maximum Instagram pleasure and clothes meant to spark a sense of instant recognition and desire — designer Rei Kawakubo continues to go her own way.
There was no set to speak of. And her clothes are not intended to provide you with comfort — unless feeling unsettled is, for you, a kind of reassurance that you still have the youthful capacity to be gleefully dismayed and challenged.
If there is any sense of familiarity in Kawakubo’s work, it is her willingness to transform the body into something that is not dependent on an hourglass shape, long legs, a narrow waist or low decolletage. And after the initial shock of this outre notion that she is sending down a runway, if you are the sort who leans in to get a better look at things that seem strange and bewildering — rather than the sort who will immediately dismiss them, mock them or deride them — then you will be rewarded.
Lean in and you will see the extraordinary textures of the velvets, some of which have been printed with leopard spots and tiger stripes. The fabrics mimic broadtail and astrakhan. There are feathers billowing from these mounds, making them seem fragile despite their mighty substance. The fabric is knotted and arranged just so.
Kawakubo has created strange and magical creatures — something more than just the haughty chicks found strutting down a catwalk supposedly telling women that they can be powerful if they’d only take possession of their sexuality by showing more cleavage and thigh and investing in a good pair of heels.
Her models are all wearing these flat black shoes with elongated toes that curl up towards the sky. They make these women seem rooted and fanciful and just a little bit bad.
