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Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons at the Met Costume Institute

Some legendary fashion designers, like Christian Dior, are known for clothes that heighten or accentuate a woman’s sexuality. Some, like Emilio Pucci, for clothes that simply follow the natural shape of a woman’s figure. Others, like Donna Karan, for practical clothes for “modern women.” And then there’s Rei Kawakubo.

The founder of the Comme des Garçons brand does clothes—or “objects for the body” as she’s called them—that are original, unconventional (to put it mildly), and weird (to put it bluntly). Incredibly shaped, fantastically constructed—or deconstructed—and category-defying, her creations make jaded fashion writers rave, ordinary folk go “huh?”, and curators like the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton say “belong in an art museum.”

Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969); Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by © Paolo Roversi

And now they are. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, the Met's latest costume exhibit (thru September 4), features around 140 pieces of the Tokyo-based designer’s womenswear, from the early 1980s to 2017. It’s only the second time in its history that The Met’s Costume Institute has devoted a show to a living designer.

While its fashion exhibitions have been loosening up a lot of late, the museum is taking a decidedly different approach with Art of the In-Between, in adhering to its subject’s avant-garde aura (in fact, the show was designed with Kawakubo’s input). Instead of the Costume Institute’s usual subterranean space, a second floor exhibition hall has been turned into a stark box, filled with a series of white cylindrical structures, like miniature Guggenheims (to mix museum references). Some are open, like stage sets; others you peek into, to see the clothes displayed within, on the Met’s characteristic blank-faced mannequins or dressmaker dummies. It seems especially apropos in one pod, labeled “Child/Adult,” that houses several bright pink little-girl dresses: you glimpse them through a narrow, off-center doorway, as if playing a game of hide-and-seek.

Though it’s open and airy, the scattered igloos make the space a winding maze of surprises: turn a corner and you suddenly come upon an object—a cape? a dress?—seemingly composed of several blue and navy sacks, or a row of inky-black kids’ garments. Don’t forget to look up: several displays are contained in elevated catwalks. Thanks to the hundreds of ceiling fluorescent tubes that light the space—in contrast to the usual dim lighting—the clothes seem vivid and clear, much less distant than in conventional costume displays.

Of course, not being behind glass—except for the elevated garments—helps, and so does the utterly plain, pristine-white presentation. Aside from terse, dualistic titles, like “East/West”, “Absence/Presence” or “Form/Function,” nary a label or word of text despoils the displays. For garment descriptions, notes, and comment, consult your copy of the exhibit brochure, handed out at the entrance. This minimalist approach is in keeping with Kawakubo’s modernistic aesthetic—and her cryptic nature, too: the designer is a big let-the-clothes-speak-for-themselves type.

But she does make fashion-philosophy statements from time to time, and several are quoted in the brochure: “There’s value in bad taste”; “I want to rethink the body, so the body and the dress become one”; and, most provocatively, “I don’t care about function at all—like when I hear ‘where could you wear that?’ or ‘it’s not very wearable’…to me it’s just a sign that someone missed the point.”

Which of course, makes you wonder, what is the point? What themes come through in these 30-odd years of collections?

Point one: contrasts. Kawakubo loves juxtaposing silhouettes and mixing fabrics—as in in a ballerina-pink tutu peeking out from under a navy military jacket, the zigzag stiches of the latter echoing the tulle folds of the former. Or a short-sleeved, 1940s-like sweater paired with a long, embroidered straight skirt with bustle-like train—Lana Turner meets Jackie Kennedy.

Point two: unfinished. Exposed seams, raw ends, and unraveled edges abound; sometimes it looks like panels of cloth have just been pinned onto a garment.

Point three: color. Though famed for black, Kawakubo doesn’t shy away from eye-popping hues, especially red. One dress from her 2015 Blood and Roses collection features three shades of red, in three different fabrics (see point one).

Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942) for Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969). Body Meets Dress–Dress Meets Body, spring/summer 1997; Courtesy of Comme des Garçons. Photograph by © Paolo Roversi

Point four: volume. Perhaps the designer’s best-known characteristic is her taste for the outsized, the exaggerated, the puffy. A 2013 glen plaid suit has sleeves so big they seem inflated. Her clothes stand stiffly away from the body, or cocoon the wearer in voluminous folds or tubes. She doesn’t stint on adornments, either: many a garment is covered in bows, ruffles, or accordion pleats—and in one case, a stuffed teddy bear.

Point five: asymmetry. There’s almost always something a little (sometimes a lot) off-kilter about a Kawakubo design. Like the slew of beautiful but bedraggled wedding gowns, collars and waists askew, from the 2005-6 Broken Bride collection. Or the set of gingham dresses from 1997 that seem traditional—until you notice that each has a jutting bump on one hip or shoulder, pulling the checked cloth out of shape.

Point six: playing with the entire concept of what clothing is. A garment may have four sleeves, or no sleeves. Or no neck hole. A jacket may wrap around the legs. Walking through the exhibit, you marvel at the variety of Kawakubo’s references, from samurai to sea creatures, from microscopic organisms to Robby the Robot, from origami to gunny sacks.

Of course, most of this bears little relation to the human body as we know it. Does that mean fashion’s Empress is wearing, or rather designing, no clothes? Maybe. But it does make Art of the In-Between an awe-inspiring show.

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