COMME DES GARÇONS

Founded in Tokyo in 1969 by Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942), officially incorporated in 1973. Kawakubo studied fine arts and literature at Keio University and worked in textile advertising before turning to clothing, with no formal fashion training. She debuted in Paris in 1981 alongside Yohji Yamamoto, in a collection the Western press struggled to read: black, asymmetric, deliberately unfinished, indifferent to the body it covered. Comme des Garçons has since operated less as a label than as a creative ecosystem, one built on deconstruction, unconventional silhouettes, and a constant refusal of trends. Kawakubo's method has been to hand her most gifted pattern cutters a line of their own, producing a house that functions as a school.

The house works across distinct lines: HOMME (1978, first chapter of men's clothing), tricot (1981, women's knitwear, later designed by Junya Watanabe and then Tao Kurihara), robe de chambre (1981, women's everyday clothing, reborn as Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons in 2004), HOMME PLUS (1984, men's runway line), HOMME DEUX (1987, elegant and tailored menswear), SHIRT (1988, shirts and beyond), JUNYA WATANABE (1992, given to Kawakubo's protégé; the care label carried the Comme des Garçons signature until AW2021), PARFUMS (1994), PLAY (2002, the heart logo drawn by Filip Pagowski), tao (2005, by Tao Kurihara; closed 2011), GANRYU (2007, by Fumito Ganryu, streetwear and workwear through a Comme lens; closed after SS2017), BLACK (2008, launched during the financial crisis and continued thanks to demand), noir kei ninomiya (2012, by Kei Ninomiya, full collection from FW2015, architectural black pieces assembled with hardware in place of stitching).