Thursday, June 8, 2017

Rei Kawakubo at the Met

When we visited the Met back in the spring, John was particularly interested in seeing the Rei Kawakubo show.
He was curious about her label, Comme des Garçons, and wanted to see her stuff.
We joined the fashionatas, who were out to worship her designs.
We knew that Kawakubo is famous for pushing the line between fashion and art.
The dresses above came the closest to being wearable fashion.
The rest of the show confused us greatly, because we couldn't relate at all to what is generally considered fashion design. 
We could see that the work resembled sculpture
some pieces amusingly abstract
but the fact that the work could also be fashion
kept coming back to confuse us.
Later, when we saw my photographs, we were surprised that the work was marvellously photogenic.
Even the oddly placed bulges looked good in the pictures.
I like the Japanese influence here.
And I think I could wear one of these tunics.
In a gallery handout, Kawakubo is quoted saying, "When I hear 'where could you wear that?'
or 'it's not very wearable,'
or 'who would wear that'
to me it's just a sign that someone missed the point." This is a brave line because it could so easily be turned against her and we found it funny that way and memorable because it expressed our confusion perfectly.
You'll need to see Kawakubo's Art of the In-Between for yourself. It's nothing if not entertaining. It is on until September 4th, 2017. 

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