A jam-packed show for the latest Comme des Garçons show, more people standing than sitting inside a dusty disused office building on a tatty block in the 9th arrondissement.
The detritus of the location echoed in the deconstruction of the clothes – another beguiling expression of fashionable art by Comme designer, Rei Kawakubo.
A show featuring new variations of tried and tested Kawakubo tricks – from inside out jackets to scrunched and crunched styles.
Opening with a slew of series of boiled wool, shrunken, ripped and at times barely stitched jackets worn with culottes and madly pintucked pants all in white. All had great magnetism. One could not help but be fascinated by their faintly deranged quality.
“White is symbolic of prayer,” was Kawakubo’s sibylline comment in her program notes.
Next came a group of inside as outside jackets, a demanding wear but a striking entrance maker. Before Rei went into overdrive with a great set of calico hacking jackets embroidered with London Pearly Men patterns.
Finishing with her best passage, a quartet of great gangster-worthy pale gray chalk-stripe suits, though cut for a poet. Pete Doherty-style shrunken suits, that made a Thom Browne silhouette look like a Balenciaga cocoon. Worn with matching shorts of felty sweatpants, by models sporting funky bleached white wigs.
Kawakubo, as is her tradition, took no bow. Though one could greet her in the tiny backstage, where she bowed deeply to each guest. Attired in a giant black coat with twisting tails, her face covered with a large white mask, she smiled gently with her eyes at visitors she recognized.
Rei said her theme was the ‘Spiritual World’ and the clothes did have an otherworldly quality. All backed up by a soundtrack that included an oddly chorister soundtrack including ‘Anarkian Kuvajainen’ by Cucina Povera.
Not quite a vintage display but an intriguing romp in semi-sacred style
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