The show was titled Return to the Source
Under the stained-glass windows of the American Cathedral on Avenue Georg V, Rei Kawakubo presented a Comme des Garçons collection titled Return to the Source. With aisle-like grace, models carried her mastodon creations in small processions in groups of four or two, illuminated by follow-lights. Every time a set of models exited the circular podium, the music abruptly stopped – a signature Comme des Garçons move – and a new track came on. The scores ranged from classical to pop and punk, as if someone had searched the annals of music history and played you random snippets from here and there. It placed the collection in a historical light: a sense of memory, nostalgia and occasional wistfulness.
It was about going back to the starting point
You could interpret the name Kawakubo gave the collection as an illustrative title – “a return to the source” – or indeed as a request: “Return to the source!” If you chose to go down the former path, her proposition emerged in a decidedly technical light. “A feeling of wanting to go back to the starting point,” she wrote in her show notes. “Working with free patterns. Using basic materials.” Her formidable structures were composed from lining materials, padding and scraps – the structural foundations of a dressmaker’s workshop – while the silhouettes played on exaggerations of the basic shapes of clothes, like a massive t-shirt or a huge dress with an equally huge oval midcentury collar.
It put the clothes in focus
If you chose to interpret the collection title as a request – “Return to the source!” – Kawakubo’s proposal felt like the wise comment of one of the longest-serving designers in the industry. You could see it as reaction to a fashion landscape that sometimes gets carried away, where smoke and mirrors often distract and detract from the clothes themselves, while gimmicks on the runway – especially of the technological kind – have become the big thing. As her shows demonstrate, Kawakubo doesn’t shy away from a theatrical moment, but the product – fantastical as it may be – is always in focus. The source, if you will, is the star of the show.
It felt reflective
If Kawakubo was feeling wistful, there were signs in the circular embellishments that adorned some of her gargantuan looks. They evoked the holes that embodied her Destroy collection from 1982 – a technique she originally called “lace” – which, as a fashion moment, marked a transition from the punk of the ‘70s into the post-punk era of the ‘80s to which Kawakubo’s aesthetic would help form. On the same day as Andreas Kronthaler presented his first show for Vivienne Westwood after the death of the queen of punk in December 2022, you couldn’t help but wonder if the loss of the queen of punk had affected Kawakubo, too.
It came with hats by Valeriane Venance
Whether it was reflective or nostalgic, the Comme des Garçons show never felt sad. On the contrary, the twosome-ness represented by the models who walked in pairs, and the generally upbeat soundtrack made for a Kawakubo show of the optimistic kind. That feeling was amplified by the exuberant headpieces created by the artist Valeriane Venance,that crowned every look, constructed from scraps of paper and fabric, from multi-coloured pipe cleaners (talk about returning to the source!) and fabric flowers. Bolstered by Kawakubo’s almost papal robes with big, furry Renaissance hoods, they had a priestliness about them. You’d want to listen to a person wearing a hat like that,
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