Comme Des Garçons Fall/Winter 2017 Ready-to-Wear Review

     Rei Kawakubo's iconic work for her line, Comme Des Garçons, is going to have the highest honor a fashion designer can have: an entire exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In fact, it is so important that Kawakubo is only the second living designer to have this happen to. The first was Yves Saint Laurent back in 1983, when Diana Vreeland was the one making the decisions at the Costume Institute at the Met. If you have followed any of Kawakubo's hard work over the last forty years, you would understand why the Met made such a statement with this forthcoming showcase. It is because Comme Des Garçons itself continues to create statements with every breathtaking collection. Every garment is soaked with art and history references, and abstract exploration of physics, the human body, and the human will. This fashion show collection in particular looked back at the evolution of Comme Des Garçons as well as what the brand means today. Starting off with a retelling of "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body", the memorable collection of Spring/Summer 1997 in stark white, rather than the brand's usual black, shows the boldness right off the bat. Evolving from pristine, sculptural shapes, the materials began to develop and whirl around the body into the essence of a floating mannequin form made from industrial fabrics. The mannequin form took off on its own to evolve into hard faux leather, paper, metal, and blood collages that engulfed the body. This is clothing as armor, as insulation, and as a part of human DNA. In fact, it was the blend of the natural world, the industrialized world, and the world within our human bodies that Kawakubo was playing with, mostly. Rather than looking back and self-referencing through a vast archive to celebrate this milestone,  Comme Des Garçons instead chose to keep pushing new ideas as if nothing has really changed. This collection thus solidifies Kawakubo as a powerhouse and one of the greatest designers of our time. Which is reason enough to put her work into the sphere of a Met exhibit, opening this May.

Photo Credits: VogueRunway.com