Agree or disagree, this is a designer whose body of work requires you take sides: either you like it or you don’t, it’s as simple as that. As for me, a long time admirer of her revolutionary spirit, seeing her designs displayed as works of art in a seamless narrative against a stark white backdrop, brought about two observations:
- If money were no object, I would be a CdG moving ad.
- If, in a different life, I were a designer, these would have been my signature works (by these I mean the entire archive, representative pieces from which were on view in Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, through September 4, 2017 at The Met).
So now that all is said and done and the spotlight has been shifted to the infinitely more Instagrammable New York Fashion Week and back onto the chic and glam fashion crowd about town, let’s take another look at Rei Kawakubo’s perfectly imperfect, beautifully ugly, alienatingly inventive, brilliantly unique designs; her Art of the In-Between:
Note from the guide: <<Mu (emptiness) is suggested through the architectural leitmotif of the circle, which in Zen Buddhism symbolizes the void, and ma (space) is evoked through the inter – play of structural forms. Ma expresses void as well as volume, a thing with and without shape — not defined by concrete boundaries. Amplified by the stark whiteness of the gallery surfaces, the visual effect is one of both absence and presence.>>
More views from Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between @ The Met Fifth Avenue, coming up.
August 6th, 2017
Hi I love your blog could you please check mine out too 🦋 lots of love 💞
LikeLiked by 1 person
The guide’s discussion regarding emptiness, void, space…all beyond my understanding. So…with intention, my concentration silenced my mind and revisited the visual experience of this blog…that is until the section “Elite Culture Popular Culture.” I was distracted with the utilization of what resembles French wigs…emptiness was filled with thoughts about the French Revolution.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your thoughts are shared by others but mainly linked to the 18th Century Punk line, coming up shortly. Not bad for a designer who had ”never intended to start a revolution”… https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/07/04/the-misfit-3
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for this introduction to segment of fashion/art that is outside my conservatively-boring world village
LikeLiked by 1 person
(and yet your blog is a wonderful example that inspiration has no boundaries)
LikeLiked by 1 person
thank you…it is really nice to read feedback like this…brings tears to my eyes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
💗
LikeLike