Florals? For Spring? Rei Kawakubo says yes. The fashion titan’s latest Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus collection was inspired by a flower’s dual qualities. “Flowers are not there only for happy times. They exist also for tough, sorrowful and painful times,” she wrote in her show notes. “Even a tiny roadside flower can heal our shredded heart.”
Presented in an intimate presentation inside Comme Des Garçons’ Tokyo headquarters – Kawakubo has vowed to show all her collections here till the pandemic is over – models came in deconstructed blazers, oversized shirts and swollen trousers rolled up into Bermuda short proportions. Each came emblazoned in kitschy florals. Optimistic, though slightly sorrowful.
Car coats fell into dresses and acidic long sleeves were worn underneath childlike dungarees; offset with playful papier-mache headpieces by super stylist Ib Kamara. Arizona-based artist Travis Bedel, aka Bedelgeuse, lent his atomical collages – which mesh together bones and organs with flowers – to a series of white coats trimmed with faux-fur. On feet, models wore 3D-printed shoes, a new Nike Air Max Sunder collaboration, and a floral dress shoe designed by Comme, George Cox and John Moore of London’s influential boutique House of Beauty and Culture. The collection’s shapes and silhouettes were quintessentially Comme. The final result? Effortlessly beautiful.
Photography courtesy of Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus.
