Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo  (b. 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/Commes des Garçons, Art of the In-Between opened on May 5, 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
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."After graduation in 1964, Kawakubo worked in the advertising department at the textile company, Ashai Kasei and she went on to work as a freelance stylist in 1967. Two years later, she began to design and make her own clothes under the label Comme des Garçons, French for "like some boys", before incorporating the label in 1973.

n 1973, she established her own company, Comme des Garçons Co. Ltd 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, opening up a boutique in Paris in 1982. Comme des Garçons specialises in anti-fashion, austere, sometimes deconstructed garments. Before 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." During the 1980s, her garments were primarily in black, dark grey or white. The emphasis on black clothing led to the Japanese press describing Kawakubo and her followers as 'The Crows'. The materials were often draped around the body and featured frayed, unfinished edges along with holes and a general asymmetrical shape. Challenging the established notions of beauty she created an uproar at her debut Paris fashion show where journalists labeled her clothes 'Hiroshima chic' amongst other things. Since the late 1980s, her colour palette has grown somewhat.
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.[9] 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." During the same broadcast, Viktor & Rolf added: "The first time we became aware of Comme de Garcons was in the 80s. I think we were 12 or 13. It made a very strong impression because fashion in general was something that we were starting to discover and Rei Kawakubo was part of this ... an enormous outburst of creativity in the beginning of the 80s. So for us she was part of the way we started to think about fashion."Two other early supporters of Kawakubo were Jean-Paul Gaultier and Donna Karan. During the NHK broadcast for Kawakubo, Gaultier stated: "I believe that Kawakubo is a woman with extreme courage. She is a person with exceptional strength. Moreover, she has a poetic spirit. When I see her creations, I feel the spirit of a young girl. A young girl who still has innocence and is a bit romantic. Yet she also has an aspect of a fighting woman, one who fears nothing as she thrusts forward." During the same broadcast of interviews in Japan, Donna Karan added: "Rei Kawakubo is a very interesting designer to me as a woman and a female designer. As a person, she is very quiet and rather withdrawn, yet her clothes make such an enormous statement."Wikipedia

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Alexander McQueen – Avant-garde Fashion

"Alexander McQueen was a London-based, English fashion designer who was head designer of the Louis Vuitton Givenchy fashion line, before starting his own line.Alexander McQueen was born on March 17, 1969, in Lewisham, London. He became head designer of the Louis Vuitton-owned Givenchy fashion line and, in 2004, launched his own menswear line. He earned the British Fashion Council's British Designer of the Year award four times, and was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. McQueen committed suicide in 2010, shortly after the death of his mother.
Fashion designer. Lee Alexander McQueen was born on March 17, 1969 into a working-class family living in public housing in London's Lewisham district. His father, Ronald, was a cab driver, and his mother, Joyce, taught social science. On their small incomes, they supported McQueen and his five siblings. McQueen, called "Lee" by his friends for most of his life, recognized his homosexuality at an early age and was teased extensively about it by schoolmates.
At age 16, McQueen dropped out of school. He found work on Savile Row, a street in London's Mayfair district famous for offering made-to-order men's suits. He worked first with the tailor shop Anderson and Shephard, and then moved to nearby Gieves and Hawkes.

McQueen decided to further his clothes-making career, and moved on from Savile Row. McQueen began working with theatrical costume designers Angels and Bermans. The dramatic style of the clothing he made there would become a signature of his later independent design work. McQueen then left London for a short stint in Milan, where he worked as a design assistant to Italian fashion designer Romeo Gigli. Upon his return to London, he enrolled at Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, and received his M.A. in fashion design in 1992. The collection he produced as the culminating project of his degree was inspired by Jack the Ripper, and was famously bought in its entirety by the well-known London stylist and eccentric Isabella Blow. She became a long-time friend of McQueen, as well as an advocate for his work.

Soon after obtaining his degree, Alexander McQueen started his own business designing clothes for women. He met enormous success with the introduction of his "bumster" pants, so named because of their extremely low-cut waistline. Only four years out of design school, McQueen was named Chief Designer of Louis Vuitton-owned Givenchy, a French haute couture fashion house. Although it was a prestigious job, McQueen took it reluctantly, and his tenure there (from 1996 to 2001) was a tumultuous time in the designer's life. Even as he was pushing the limits of what people expected from fashion (one of his shows featured a model who was an amputee walking the runway on carved wooden legs), McQueen felt he was being held back. He would later say that the job "constrain[ed] his creativity." However, he also made the following admission: "I treated Givenchy badly. It was just money to me. But there was nothing I could do: the only way it would have worked would have been if they had allowed me to change the whole concept of the house, to give it a new identity, and they never wanted me to do that." Even with his reservations about his work, McQueen won British Designer of the year in 1996, 1997, and 2001, all during his time at Givenchy..."(Alexander McQueen Biography.com )

Art & Fashion

Avant-Garde-fashion - Anti-fashion

Anti-fashion is an umbrella term for various styles of dress which are explicitly contrary to the fashion of the day. Anti-fashion styles may represent an attitude of indifference or may arise from political or practical goals which make fashion a secondary priority. The term is sometimes even used for styles championed by high-profile designers, when they encourage or create trends that do not follow the mainstream fashion of the time. This anti-fashion was adopted in response to the 'overly fashion conscious' fans of bands such as the Sex Pistols.
In the 1990s, a minimalist style described as anti fashion emerged on both sides of the Atlantic where young people would typically wear simple clothes such as black jeans and white T-shirts without a visible brand name. Another period of anti-fashion has taken place in the 1950s with the advent of rock and roll, especially with young adolescent women.Instead of the standard of wearing a dress or skirt, particularly hoop skirts and poodle skirts, many young women wore jeans and plaid shirts, or simple plain T shirts in rebellion with the gender roles and societal norms at that time. This fashion has the roots of many modern anti-fashion trends, such as grunge, decades later.Wikipedia

 " From punk to grunge, from wearable pieces of art to conceptual fashion and crazy body adornments, ‘Anti-Fashion’ describes the ways in which designers and the fashion-aware express their opposition to the fashion establishment.
In the context of contemporary fashion, which has seen various hybridizations between art and fashion, style and design, mainstream and avant-garde, fast-fashion and slow-fashion, where’s the borderline between ‘official’ fashion and its opposite? Can we still trace a clear distinction between what’s ‘Anti-Fashion’, and what’s just plain ‘fashion’?
As we deal with an ambiguous, tricky concept, it is important to underline from the beginning what I mean by Anti-Fashion. In fashion theory, the concept of Anti-Fashion is usually linked to the avant-garde, especially that of the 1990s (an era that is widely believed to have given birth to Anti-Fashion). Fashion theorists debate it in various ways – from Simmel’s ‘differentiation vs. conformism’ to Elizabeth Wilson’s ‘oppositional dress’ or Claire Wilcox’s ‘radical fashion’. Actually, Anti-Fashion is a general term which attempts to cover particular phenomena in the field of fashion, namely uses of fashion that are previously unheard of, or which do not easily fit into an established category or mode of fashion.

 While the (un)fashion styles tend to evolve apart from the world of fashion, the concept of Anti-Fashion is closely linked to the intrinsic dynamism of fashion. The history of fashion provides us with many examples. In the ‘20s, Gabrielle Chanel initiated an Anti-Fashion movement, proposing masculine attire for women. About the same time, the Italian artist Thayaht designed the Tuta, an utopian outfit inspired by workwear, which appealed to the Italian elites of the time. The Zoot suit emerged as a product of counterculture in ‘40s America. Rudi Gernreich’s infamous monokini of the early ‘60s was, in its way, a statement of Anti-Fashion, as were Kawakubo’s frayed clothes in the ‘80s. Each phase of avant-garde was initially described as Anti-Fashion – Westwood’s punk style, Hamnett’s militant T-shirts, McQueen’s subversive shows.
As we can see, Anti-Fashion is possible only in the context of the mainstream fashion (without referral to which, Anti-Fashion simply doesn’t make sense). Fashion and Anti-Fashion share a lifelong love-hate relationship. They’re somehow symbiotic, as the evolution of fashion is fuelled by Anti-Fashions, and the Anti-Fashion arises as a reaction to ‘official’ fashion.(notjustalabel.com)"

 

Art & Fashion

Art & Fashion : Shail Upadhya

Shail Upadhya (1935-2013) was a Nepalese diplomat, United Nations disarmament expert and fashion designer.
In a second career, Upadhya worked as a fashion designer, becoming a social fixture in New York City, known for his flamboyant and colorful suits and outfits. He was a prominent presence in the 2011 documentary film Bill Cunningham New York, about New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.He lived in New York City, Southampton, New York, and Miami, Florida.
Upadhya was interviewed on Da Ali G Show by Sacha Baron Cohen's character Brüno at New York Fashion WeekWikipedia

Art & Fashion

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe(born in Fukushima, Japan in 1961) is a Japanese fashion designer, originally the protégé of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo. Born in Fukushima, Japan in 1961, he went on to attend Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, graduating in 1984.[2] At this time he began his apprenticeship at Comme des Garçons as a patternmaker. In 1987, he was promoted to chief designer of Tricot knitwear line and then moved on to design for the Comme Des Garçons Homme line. Starting in 1992, he has worked under his own name as part of Comme des Garçons. He started his own line under the Comme Des Garçons name called 'Junya Watanabe Comme Des Garçons' in 1993 and began showing in Paris that same year.

 “My idea of something being beautiful or aesthetically pleasing is completely different from what Rei Kawakubo’s vision of beauty is,” Watanabe allows. “To this day, seeing Rei Kawakubo’s work, I feel the same. I understand certain points and I can relate to certain areas ... That doesn’t mean that I completely agree. As a person-to-person relationship, I feel that I have a different idea, and I’ll always have a different vision of what is beautiful. Another reason, perhaps, I didn’t end up working right alongside Kawakubo is perhaps she felt that I had a different vision of my own. Maybe that’s why we parted, in terms of creating something that was different.” -Junya Watanabe.Wikipedia

Art & Fashion

Avant-garde fashion Hu Sheguang

"Spectators in the front row could have been forgiven for thinking they had wandered into a screening of a horror film rather than a catwalk presentation at China Fashion Week today. Designer Hu Sheguang's show was a riot of red with unsettling touches such as a model holding two dolls that looked as if they were covered in blood; horned figures and numerous prosthetic hands adorning the necks of garments.
The Chinese-Dutch fashion designer sent his models down the catwalk in nightmarish creations at the show in Beijing, with liberal splatterings of fake blood. 

 One model stepped down the catwalk in a full-length red gown accessorised with a fake mask and huge devil horns. Another made for a creepy sight as she walked with a model who looked as she could be her twin.
The sinister pair's appearance was enhanced as one was wearing a top that looked a lot like a straitjaket, binding her arms to her sides. A fake hand stuck out from each of their shoulders.
Even the models' hair was red, and was given a shiny appearance, possibly to echo the appearance of flowing blood as the showed off the designer's Autumn Winter 2016 collection.
A PVC dress with a huge flower on the shoulder made for a dramatic site, and was even more arresting as the model wore a matching mask covering her entire face with two slits for the eyes and one for the mouth.
Masks were a popular element of the collection with another model sporting a full face mask with two huge ears at the side, looking like a large bow. 

Although there were slits for the eyes and mouth, the person's face was completely invisible behind the creation. Body parts such as hands and heads featured liberally with one model sporting a huge cape-like garment with prosthetic hands emerging from the neckline. Another had give red heads with no eyes lined up along their shoulders, while a model walked down the catwalk with her face painted red and her eyes closed was almost impossible to distinguish from the mannequin heads around her shouldersA full skirted ballgown with coils of wire on top made the blood covered model look as if she'd been involved in a particularly nasty accident.
While models are known for strutting down the catwalk with blank sphinx-like expressions to let the clothes do the talking, this particular fashionista got into the spirit of things, with the angry look of a wild animal ready to pounce. Another paused for effect and stretched out her arms as she showed off her elaborate head gear, which featured a kite with ribbons that streamed to the floor.The designer moved to the Netherlands aged 16 and runs a fashion store in Amsterdam, and he's known for designs being at the more extreme end of the spectrum.."(  "Sexy as hell! PVC-clad models clutch demonic dolls and sprout devil's horns in bizarre Chinese catwalk show that is the stuff of nightmares"  dailymail.co.uk )

Art & Fashion