SPIRITUAL WORLD. White symbolizes prayer.
The above lines are taken directly from the note Rei Kawakubo wrote, and translated into English to accompany, if not directly explain, her Comme des Garçons Homme Plus show. Well, you knew what she said. What can we, helpless in the face of the world, do but pray?
You often come to Comme because you are disturbed or intellectually stimulated by the feeling that you do not understand something. (That, strange to say, is part of the thrill). Other times, one of Kawakubo’s shows can catch you off guard just by being funny. But this season she judged that neither confrontation nor cheerfulness were possible. If fashion plays an emotional role, it is to be gentle, calm and soothing.
However little she communicates with words, Kawakubo conveyed that feeling through the contemplation of fluffy, felted surfaces, openwork jackets like shrunken vests, and trousers (or anti-trousers) with voluminous, draped pleats. At one point she eliminated the pants and replaced them with white pleated skirts. Then came the knitting: soft cages, lacy baby-knit sweaters, worn with ruffles, almost Victorian bloomers.
In a season of ubiquitously dark, austere tailoring, it was something of a breath of fresh air to spend half an hour in Kawakubo’s world of alternative masculinity. Not everything she did was white. There were black and navy blue jackets, some embroidered with pearl buttons, similar to the folkloric tradition of the East London Pearly King. There’s not even a trace of toxic masculinity, militarism, or aggression in Rei Kawakubo’s female-designed Comme des Garçons universe. If only that could be true for the world outside.
