“I would find it impossible to see my clothes in a space designed by someone else. My clothes and the space they inhabit are inseparable. They are one and the same. They convey the same vision, the same message and the same value… They are one piece, they share the same creation.”
Rei Kawakubo did not create a fashion brand.
She created a universe.
Like a sculptor working from a single block to shape multiple forms, Kawakubo gave life to a world built specifically for her creations. Not only garments, but also the spaces surrounding them, the words accompanying them, all belong to one cohesive and coherent vision.
Comme des Garçons was founded in 1975 in Aoyama, Tokyo, and from that moment on it began to disrupt the established codes of fashion. Rei's creative approach aligns more with architecture than with traditional fashion design. Form sits at the center of her practice. Shapes often detached from practicality and deliberately opposed to the body's silhouette become carriers of ideas and meaning. After her Paris debut in 1981, the aesthetics of prêt-à-porter changed radically. Through her influence, alongside that of Yohji Yamamoto, femininity was rewritten into subtle, clear, and powerful symbols.
Comme des Garçons campaign Fall 1998
Mrs. Kawakubo delivers a precise and uncompromising message, not only through clothing, but through an entire system of visual signs. Art, design, advertising, and visual media operate in perfect coordination to spreading one unmistakable voice: CDG. From the very beginning, Comme des Garçons rejected conventional communication strategies, choosing instead to support innovative creative minds such as Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara, who continue to present their collections under the CDG umbrella today.
From 2004 onward, Rei's universe took physical form through Dover Street Market. Starting in London, it expanded globally, reaching Tokyo, New York, Singapore, Beijing, Paris, and Los Angeles. Experiencing a space like Dover Street Market is immersive, almost museum-like, where display settings, garments, scents, and accessories become part of a single narrative. Everything feels exactly where it should be, because each element belongs to an idea far greater than the individual object. A discourse where individual components converge to give meaning to the whole. A space in which creativity, in all its forms, finds room to exist: from CDG collections to emerging designers, to accessories and fragrances, all framed by a design that is both clean and powerful.
Dover Street Market London, 2014
It is a monumental idea built on oppositions: absence and presence, emptiness and fullness, chaos and rigor, the extreme and the subtle. Stepping inside feels like entering a parallel cosmos, where you almost fear disrupting the invisible law holding everything together. Garments and objects voice an opposition to the system, doing so with such precision, and at times severity, that balance emerges from chaos.
From the 1970s to today, Mrs. Comme des Garçons has disseminated her aesthetic everywhere. From the smallest detail of her concept stores, to her unmistakable haircut, to shapes that shift between sinuous and disruptive, everything converges within a single vision. Comme des Garçons is not a brand; it is closer to a cult, a way of seeing life. It is not only fashion, but a circulation of ideas opposing the conventional way of understanding and observing the world and society.
This is why a visionary like Rei occupies such a crucial place in modern culture. Rarely are the “great ones” fully recognized while still in the midst of their work, yet her imprint is so strong it cannot be ignored. With Art of the In-Between in 2017, Kawakubo became the second living designer, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983, to receive a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition unfolded as a minimalist journey composed of 150 creations, offering a profound exploration of the designer's aesthetic and cultural history, as well as that of her maison, from 1991 onward.
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garçons. Art of the In-Between. MET 2017
Everything seems effortless for Rei, and yet it is rare for a single figure to contribute so deeply to global visual culture. None of her creations can escape her unified vision, because each one belongs to her way of seeing the world, while responding to its stimuli. Every object belongs to Rei just as Rei belongs to each of her creations. They are inseparable. CDG is Rei, and Rei is CDG.
