Breaking the idea of clothes : Rei Kawakubo's fashion manifesto

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

Karen de Perthuis Rei Kawakubo is a famously, intensely private person. An anomaly in high-end fashion’s celebrity designer-focused, brand-driven world, she stopped taking the customary post-collection bow on the catwalk years ago. She rarely gives interviews, expecting instead anyone who wants to understand her work to look at the clothing itself. So in October 2013, when the high-profile website The Business of Fashion published a ‘creative manifesto’ written by the founder of Comme des Garçons, it made an impression. Kawakubo didn’t say any of the things that designers usually say about the creative process. Art, fashion history, films and travel had as little to do with the creation of her Spring/Summer 2014 collection as ‘seeing new shops, looking at silly magazines [or] taking an interest in the activities of people in the street’. Because these things already existed they could not help her find something new. What she wants, what she has to wait for, is ‘the chance for something completely new to be born within myself.’ In order for this to happen, wrote Kawakubo, ‘I tried to think and feel and see as if I wasn’t making clothes.’
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRei Kawakubo: For and Against Fashion
EditorsRex Butler
Place of PublicationU.K.
PublisherBloomsbury Visual Arts
Pages137-156
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)9781350118249
ISBN (Print)9781350118225
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

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