October 3, 2022 |
“A lamentation for the sorrow in the world today. And a feeling of wanting to stand together,” so read the press notes from Comme Des Garçons. The first outfit a giant funnel shaped hood, the model’s startled little face peering out at the flash bulbs beyond.
Rei Kawakubo was back on the Paris runway after two and a half years of Covid induced absence and the excitement in the room was palpable. Comme is like a church. We come to worship at the alter of strange beauty, where each piece is a mood.
Fabric was bunched and cupped into ever more enveloping silhouettes including startling pieces that looked like formal jackets writ large. Clothes were dissected and reassembled into something else. A neck ruff was made with sleeves of tailored jackets arms layered on top of each other, like a formal embrace. A tiered crinoline skirt came with protruding petticoats, another appeared to have part-eaten a tailored jacket, leaving the undigested parts hanging off the hips. Was it political? Kawakubo didn’t make specific references to a particular sorrow, although one hooded piece brought to mind the Handmaid’s Tale bonnets. For all the uncertainly, anxiety and inequality in the world, there was a sense of relief that verged in jubilation, too. Comme was back in Paris.
Photography courtesy of Comme Des Garçons.
