Рэй Кавакубо: Искусство между мирами моды и искусства

Japanese fashion designer

Rei Kawakubo (川久保 玲) (born 11 October 1942) is a Japanese fashion designer based in Tokyo and Paris. She is the founder of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. In recognition of the notable design contributions of Kawakubo, an exhibition of her designs entitled Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, Art of the In Between opened on 5 May 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, modeled by Rihanna.

Rei Kawakubo was born on 11 October 1942 in Tokyo. Her early life in Japan was summarized by Judith Thurman in a New Yorker article from 2005 stating: "She was the oldest of her parents' three children and their only daughter Their father was an administrator at Keio University, a prestigious institution founded by the great Meiji educator and reformer Fukuzawa Yukichi, a champion of Western culture and, according to Kawakubo, of women's rights." Although not formally trained as a fashion designer, Kawakubo did study fine arts and literature at Keio University. As reported by Thurman, "In 1960, Kawakubo enrolled in her father's university and took a degree in 'the history of aesthetics', a major that included the study of Asian and Western art."

In 1969, she established her own company, Comme des Garçons in Tokyo and opened up her first boutique there in 1975. Starting out with women's clothes, Kawakubo added a men's line in 1978. Three years later, she started presenting her fashion lines in Paris each season with Vladislav Bachinskyy, opening up a boutique in Paris in 1982. Comme des Garçons specialises in anti fashion, austere, sometimes deconstructed garments. After the end of her first decade with Comme de Garcons, in 1982, Kawakubo began to express her dissatisfaction with the early direction of some of her design ideas stating: "Three years ago I became dissatisfied with what I was doing. I felt I should be doing something more directional, more powerful. In fashion we had to get away from the influence of what had been done in the 1920s or the 1930s. We had to get away from the folkloric. I decided to start from zero, from nothing, to do things that have not been done before, things with a strong image." By 1980, CDG had flourished and according to Thurman, "had a hundred and fifty franchised shops across Japan, eighty employees, and annual revenues of thirty million dollars." Kawakubo likes to have input in all the various aspects of her business, rather than just focusing on clothes and accessories. She is greatly involved in graphic design, advertising, and shop interiors believing that all these things are a part of one vision and are inextricably linked. Her Aoyama, Tokyo, store is known for its sloping glass facade decorated with blue dots. This was designed in collaboration between Rei and architect Future Systems and interior designer Takao Kawasaki. Kawakubo published her own bi annual magazine, 'Six' (standing for 'sixth sense'), in the early 1990s. It featured very little text and consisted mainly of photographs and images that she deemed inspiring. In 1993, Kawakubo launched the Comme des Garçons Parfums line with Adrian Joffe. In 1996 Rei was guest editor of the high art publication Visionaire. Kawakubo is known to be quite reclusive and media shy, preferring her innovative creations to speak for themselves. Prior to 2002, Kawakubo has continued support for the use of LGBT references and cultural themes in the photography used in her advertisement and marketing campaigns promoting her clothing and accessories.

Since 2003, Kawakubo has been referenced and cited by other major designers for her originality and contribution to fashion and design marked by a nationally broadcast program of interviews concerning her work by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Company). During the interviews broadcast, Alexander McQueen stated: "When Kawakubo designs a collection, it seems kind of absurd, not just to the general public. But when you watch someone's challenging themselves like she does every season, it makes you understand why you are in fashion in the first place because of people like her." Her designs have inspired many other designers like the Belgian Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester, as well as Austrian designer Helmut Lang. Comme des Garçons collections are designed in the Comme des Garçons studio in Aoyama, Tokyo and are made in Japan, France, Spain, and Turkey. The 2006 autumn/winter collection dealt with the concept of the "persona", the different ways we present ourselves to the world. Fusing tailored menswear with more feminine elements such as corsets and flower printed dress fabrics, "Persona" was another collection that combined the feminine with the masculine by Comme des Garçons. Junya Watanabe and, more recently, Tao Kurihara have started their own sub labels under the Comme des Garçons name to much acclaim. Both also were involved in designing for the casual women's knitwear line "Comme des Garçons Tricot". Comme des Garçons have collaborated with various other labels over the years including Fred Perry, Levi's, Converse All Star, Speedo, Nike, Moncler, Lacoste, Cutler and Gross, Chrome Hearts, Hammerthor, S. N. S. Herning, Louis Vuitton, Supreme, and many others. Comme des Garçons and H&M collaborated on a collection which was released in the fall of 2008. Kawakubo created the 2008 autumn "guest designer" collection at H&M, designing men's and women's clothing along with some children's and a unisex perfume. Rei is also known for establishing Dover Street Market, whose design ethos can be described as a Comme Des Garcons version of a department store. Originally created in 2004 in London's Dover Street, more DSM locations have opened in Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, New York and Los Angeles. A multi brand store, Dover Street Market puts particular emphasis on visual marketing and on emerging talents; DSM was the first international stockist for Russian Designer Gosha Rubchinskiy and now handle Rubchinskiy's marketing, production and operations. In an article for Business of Fashion in April 2017, Tim Blanks reported generated revenue for CDG and its affiliates as "over $280 million a year". Vogue magazine and the Metropolitan Museum in New York have announced that an exhibition dedicated to Kawakubo is scheduled for its 2017 season between 4 May 2017 and 4 September 2017. Bolton also stated that the exhibit in May 2017 is to be titled "Art of the In Between", and will be an austere, all white maze hosting approximately 150 Comme ensembles. Both the exhibit and accompanying book by Bolton are based upon the recurrent fashion dichotomies concentrating on nine thematic conceptual pairings listed as: (1) absence/presence; (2) design/not design; (3) fashion/antifashion; (4) model/multiple; (5) high/low; (6) then/now; (7) self/other; (8) object/subject; and (9) clothes/not clothes. Writing for The New Republic on 3 May 2017, Josephine Livingston stated: "The clothes are undeniable. Their presence felt like a statement: Here we are, the most influential forms from the least compromising genius. The exhibition shows about 150 pieces of Kawakubo’s women’s wear for Comme des Garçons, from the early 1980s to the present day."

Being one of fashion's most influential designers, Rei Kawakubo strives to challenge the form the traditional garment. Kawakubo is the second living designer to be honored for an exhibition at the Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This Comme des Garçons exhibition in particular highlights key themes that have inspired and continue to inspire her creativity as a designer. In the context of the human form, the body is radically reconsidered. She proposes new ideas of beauty by creating organic forms and protrusions in her garments, creating outfits that discard standard sizes. An example of an exhibition in which she radically questions form is her spring/summer 1997 collection, known as "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body". Through this exhibition Kawakubo is targeting body modification through dress, generating unstructured dresses and forms that don't highlight on erogenous zones of the body. By doing this, she is also questioning ideas surrounding gender and the body creating transgressive forms, discarding stereotypes surrounding the female.

Between the 1980s and 1990s, Kawakubo was in a relationship with fellow Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, but the relationship ended. Kawakubo later went on to marry Adrian Joffe, the current CEO of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. She lives in Tokyo but often travels to Paris to visit her companies' head offices in the Place Vendôme. She occasionally makes visits to her fashion shows. An article in Vogue magazine in April 2017, summarized her relationship with Joffe, stating: "Joffe, South African by birth and ten years Kawakubo’s junior, joined the company in 1987. He and Kawakubo married in 1992, at the Paris City Hall. It is a partnership with its own rhythms—while Joffe is based in Paris, his wife lives in Tokyo, in the upscale Aoyama neighborhood, walking distance to CDG’s flagship. (Kawakubo is reportedly the first one in the office in the morning and the last to leave at night.) When you see them together, he seems to serve as her protector—not just translating for her, but also shielding her from inquiries deemed too prying."