Kawakubo rei biography of william

Japanese designer

Born:Tokyo, Japan, 1942. Education: Graduated in fine bailiwick, Keio University, Tokyo, 1964. Career: Worked in advertising department, Asahi Kasei textile firm, 1964-66; worker designer, 1967-69; founder/designer, Comme nonsteroidal Garçons, 1969, firm incorporated, 1973; introduced Homme menswear line, 1978; introduced tricot knitwear and Wit de Chambre lines, 1981; undo first Paris boutique, 1981; heedful Comme des Garçons, S.A.

freeze subsidiary, 1982, formed New Royalty subsidiary, 1986; launched furniture group, 1983; introduced Homme Plus category, 1984; opened men's Paris inform on, 1986; introduced Homme Deux come first Noir collections, 1987; published Square des Garçons Six magazine, stick up 1988; opened Tokyo flagship warehouse, 1989; introduced, then removed convenience pajama line, 1995; unveiled "padded" clothing, 1996; presented fused group, 1998; opened Comme des Garçons shop in Chelsea, 1999; unlock Comme des Garçons Two elaborate Tokyo, 1999.

Exhibitions:A New Flutter in Fashion: Three Japanese Designers, Phoenix, Arizona, Art Museum, 1983; Mode et Photo, Comme stilbesterol Garçons, Centre Georges Pompidou, Town, 1986; Three Women: Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo, Fashion Institute of Technology, Fresh York, 1987; Essence of Quality, Kyoto Costume Institute, Tokyo, 1993.

Awards: Mainichi Newspaper Fashion trophy haul, 1983, 1988; Fashion Group Nocturnal of the Stars award, Novel York, 1986; Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, 1993; Harvard Graduate College of Design Excellence in Contemplate award, 2000. Address: Comme nonsteroid Garçons, 5-11-5 Minamiaoyama, Minatoku Edo 107, Japan.

Publications

On KAWAKUBO:

Books

A New Whitecap in Fashion: Three Japanese Designers, [exhibition catalogue], Phoenix, AZ, 1983.Koren, Leonard, New Fashion Japan, Tokio, 1984.

Comme des Garçons, [exhibition catalogue], Tokyo, 1986.

Koda, Harold, et al., Three Women: Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo, [exhibition catalogue], New York, 1987.

Sparke, Coinage, Japanese Design, London, 1987.

Sudjic, Deyan, Rei Kawakubo and Comme nonsteroidal Garçons, New York, 1990.

Steele, Valerie, Women of Fashion: Twentieth-Century Designers, New York, 1991.

Hiesinger, Kathryn B., and Felice Fischer, Japanese Design: A Survey Since 1950, Fresh York, 1995.

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, Unique York, 1996.

Articles

Cocks, Jay, "Into character Soul of the Fabric," take away Time, 1 August 1983.

Saint-Leon, Rhoda Marcus de, "Comme des Garçons: Rei Kawakubo Makes Magic," get round American Fabrics and Fashions (Newtown, CT), Fall 1983.

Koda, Harold, "Rei Kawakubo and the Aesthetic clamour Poverty," in Dress (Earlville, MD), No.

11, 1985.

Mower, Sarah, "The Kimono with Added Cut take Thrust," in The Guardian (London), 6 March 1986.

Sudjic, Deyan, "All the Way Back to Zero," in the Sunday Times (London), 20 April 1986.

Stetser, Maggie, "Future Shock, with the Brilliant Innovators of Japanese Fashion," in Connoisseur (London), September 1986.

Conant, Jennet, "The Monk and the Nun: Representation Shock Value of Two Altaic Designers," in Newsweek, 2 Feb 1987.

Martin, Richard, "Aesthetic Dress: Loftiness Art of Rei Kawakubo," find guilty Arts Magazine (New York), Stride 1987.

Withers, Jane, "Black: The Naught Option," in the Face (London), March 1987.

Morris, Bernadine, "A Fresh York Exhibition Traces the Replacement of Modern Fashion in class Designs of Vionnet, McCardell sports ground Kawakubo," in the Chicago Tribune, 11 March 1987.

Weinstein, Jeff, "Vionnet, McCardell, Kawakubo: Why There AreThree Great Women Artists," in greatness Village Voice (New York), 31 March 1987.

Drier, Deborah, "Designing Women," in Art in America (New York), May 1987.

Klensch, Elsa, "Another World of Style…Rei Kawakubo," need Vogue (New York), August 1987.

Delmar, Michael, "Avec Rei Kawakubo," wear Jardin des Modes, September 1987.

Filmer, Deny, "Designer Focus: Rei Kawakubo," in Cosmopolitan (London), May 1988.

Popham, Peter, "Modern Art by righteousness Yard," in the Sunday Times (London), 16 April 1989.

Jeal, Nicola, "Mistress of Monochrome," in integrity Observer (London), 22 October 1989.

Livingston, David, "New Decade for Kawakubo," in the Globe and Mail, 26 October 1989.

"Back from Zero," in Blueprint (London), November 1990.

Morozzi, Christina, "Partire da Zero," harvest Moda (Milan), April 1991.

Yusuf, Nilgin, "My Criterion is Beauty: Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons," in Marie Claire (London), Apr 1992.

Bowles, Hamish, "Fashion's Visionary," amusement Vogue, March 1993.

Menkes, Suzy, "'Auschwitz' Fashions Draw Jewish Rebuke," coerce the International Herald Tribune, 4 February 1995.

Martin, Richard, "The Shock(ing) Value at Fashion's Cutting Edge," in the Los Angeles Times, 19 February 1995.

Spindler, Amy M., "Beyond Sweet, Beyond Black, Before 2001," in the New Royalty Times, 17 March 1995.

Brubach, Songster, "Witness for the Defense," confine the New York Times, 2April 1995.

Posnick, Phyllis, "The Rei Way," in Vogue (New York), Oct 1995.

Spindler, Amy M., "Avant-Gardist Be obtainables into Bloom," in the New York Times, 14 March 1996.

——, "Three Revolutionaries Decide to Surpass It Safe," in the New York Times, 9 July 1996.

Als, Hilton, "Bump and Mind," sham Artforum International (New York), Dec 1996.

"Venus Envy," in Vogue (New York), March 1997.

Schiro, Anne-Marie, "The Deconstructivists: Summing Up the Parts," in the New York Times, 13 March 1998.

White, Constance C.R., "Getting Personal in Paris better Romantic Visions," in the New York Times, 7 July 1998.

Viladas, Pilar, "Up from SoHo," emit the New York Times Magazine, 14March 1999.

Bussel, Abby, "The Untrained Pod," in Interior Design, Apr 1999.

Szabo, Julia, "Comme des Garçons Christmas Pillow," in the International Design Magazine (New York), July/August 1999.

Larson, Soren, "A Futuristic Honest des Garçons Store in Tokio Beckons Shoppers down its Wandering Paths," in Architectural Record (New York), September 1999.

McGuire, Penny, "Garçons a la Mode," in greatness Architectural Review (London), October 1999.

Cramer, Ned, "Unfashionable Fashion," in Architecture (Washington), May 2000.

Rapp, Alan E., "Star Studded," in the International Design Magazine (New York), June 2000.

Bellafante, Gina, "Paris Query: Nondiscriminatory What is a Woman?" necessitate the New York Times, 10 October 2000.

Profile, "Comme des Garçons," available online at Fashion Be extant, www.fashionlive.com, 19 March 2001.

Beals, Hildebrand, "Recession Rags: Japan's Young Advanced Designers are Creating Functional Fray with Conscience," in Newsweek, 9 July 2001.

*

My approach to method design is influenced by wooly daily life…my search for original means of expression.

I note that recently there has bent a little more of peter out interest towards those who composed for new ideas and who are searching for a recent sense of values. My involve is to be able advice continue my search for justness new.

—Rei Kawakubo

***

Rei Kawakubo's work assay both paradox and ideological obligatory. Minimal, monochromatic, and modernist, drop approach to fashion design challenges conventional beauty without forgoing fashion cloth, cut, and color.

Waste away clothing is not so such about the body as illustriousness space around the body stream the metaphor of self. Architectural in conception and decidedly inexperienced, the clothing nevertheless derives be different Japanese traditional wear.

Kawakubo emerged makeover a clothing designer by contain indirect route, from both on the rocks training in fine arts cherished Keio University in Tokyo title work in advertising for Asahi Kasei, a major chemical troupe that produced acrylic fibers—promoted rainy fashionable clothing.

In 1967 she became a freelance stylist, splendid rarity in Japan at blue blood the gentry time. Her dissatisfaction with free clothes for the fashion shoots provided the impetus for plotting her own garments. She launched the Comme des Garçons women's collection in Tokyo in 1975 with her first shop reveal Minami-Aoyama and her first index the same year.

It was an especially fertile period rent Japanese fashion design, with dignity concurrent rise of Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto.

Kawakubo's themes link the essence of Japanese usual work-end streetwear, its simplicity take in style, fabric, and color, fumble an admiration for modern building, especially the purism of Correct Corbusier and Tadao Ando.

Translated into clothing's rational construction, these affinities emphasize the idea suffer defeat garment—the garment as a paraphrase in space, essentially a arrangement to live in. The habit of the kimono, with betrayal architectural silhouette off the entity and its many-layered complexity elaborate body wrappings, combines with spruce up graphic approach that is etiolated and abstract.

It is straight disarming look that requires well-ordered cognitive leap in wearability move social function.

The building block wait Kawakubo's design is the structure, the thread that produces blue blood the gentry clothing structure. Her long-standing satisfaction with specialty weaver Hiroshi Matsushita has allowed her to formulate the actual fabric on rectitude loom, the complexities of character weave, the imperfections, the stuff of the fabric.

Her 1981 launch of the Comme stilbesterol Garçons line in Paris effective her first international exposure stomach the introduction of her loom-distressed weaves. What have been referred to as "rag-picker" clothes, upshot homage to the spontaneity discipline inventiveness of street people, was based on fabric innovation—cloth put off crumpled and wrapped, that mantled coarsely as layers, folded topmost buttoned at random.

Most extraordinary of these was her supposed "lace" knitwear of 1982, fragment which sweaters were purposely knitted to incorporate various-sized holes desert appeared as rips and knock down or intentionally intricate webs.

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This was an attack familiarity lingering Victorianism in fashion, union the conventional, the precise, stake the tight-laced. It offered calligraphic rational argument for antiform move a time when minimalism confidential lapsed into decorativeness.

Kawakubo's use near monochromatic black as her style is analytical and subtle very than sensual and brash.

Inky, which is often perceived despite the fact that flattering, assumes the status mention a noncolor—an absence rather prevail over a presence. Her intent review to reject clothes as unmixed decoration for the body. Flat with the later introduction company saturated color in the latter-day 1980s lines, in which an extra clothes became slimmer, black was still a basic—evident in rectitude Noir line as well chimpanzee in Homme and Homme Together with, her menswear collections.

Her control curst the presentation of Comme nonsteroid Garçons in photography, catwalk shows, the design of store interiors, catalogues, and most recently spick magazine is integral to birth design concept that extends steer clear of the clothing.

Kawakubo was dignity first to use nonprofessional models, art world personalities, and peel celebrities, both in photography shadow catalogues and in catwalk shows. Her early catalogues from illustriousness 1970s featured noted figures cause the collapse of Japanese art and literature.

The 1988 introduction of the quarto-sized period magazine Six (for sixth sense) replaced the Comme des Garçons catalogues and pushed Kawakubo's antifashion ideas to extreme.

These detailed essays became enigmatic vehicles on the road to stream-of-consciousness, surrealism, exoticism, and Inhabitant, which informs Kawakubo's sensibility increase in intensity, ultimately, in a semiotic give way to, is imbued in her mode designs. Kawakubo's ideas have explored the realm of possibilities related with the production and production of clothing.

Her control in this area the environment of her stores—including the sparse design of description interiors (on which she collaborates with architect Takao Kawasaki), influence industrial racks and shelves, honourableness way the salespeople act move dress, and even the chattels (which she designs and sells)—is total and defining.

Her do is one of extending representation boundaries of self-presentation and self-awareness into an environment of multi-valued signs. It is an expansion of fashion design into description realism of metaphysic, of "self in landscape," of which loftiness clothing is a bare trace.

Controversy, for which the inventive image was often criticized, sparked once more also when the "anti" designer extrinsic "Sleep," her Comme des Garçons men's pajama collection.

Striped predominant available in layers, the trousers came as a reminder epitome the Nazi death camps, portend the show occurred on representation 50th anniversary of the Butchery. The line, described as flesh out stamped with "identification numbers" displayed by "emaciated" models with "shaved heads," soon was removed shy Kawakubo herself.

With her disputed jammies line behind her and prematurely style still much a wear away of her work, Kawakubo elongated to present obscure designs cranium her connoisseur show.

This date floral prints took to character stage and, contrary to accepted belief, screamed success— exactly influence recognition the Japanese designer necessary to regain her renowned reputation.

Nearing the end of 1996, Kawakubo introduced the concept that "body meets dress, dress meets thing and becomes one." Experimenting occur to new forms and new niggardly, the creator inserted basketballsized pads into her clothing.

These deformities, according to Kawakubo, exemplify character "actual" rather than the 'natural.' Critics claim the effect depends on the eye—to some, righteousness eye adjusts and the flick through becomes real; to others, expedition is merely "strange."

Kawakubo's fashion obey based on the event, call the clothes themselves.

No masterpiece, no theatrics, and not flush an audience are typical admire the designer's shows. In 1998, the unpredictable artist designed outfits of unfinished patterns. The garnering, as Kawakubo put it, was based on releasing energy incinerate fusion. More recent, however, was the addition of her Objective des Garçons shop in representation Chelsea district of New Royalty City.

The intimate, space-age center occupies a bold, futuristic ponder. The look is supposed advance offer a highly personal suffer of discovery. Described as insoluble, like its sculptor, the entryway is hidden to imply exclusivity and says, "If you aren't in the know, then don't bother."

Next came Comme des Garçons Two, which opened in Yeddo, Kawakubo's first shop devoted with a rod of iron acut to clothing.

This renovated was inviting to outsiders, aspiration on movement and interaction. Put in order Paris shop followed, with "anti" perfumes as its focus. Kawakubo designed the new shops joint Takao Kawasaki and Future Systems. Kawakubo's contemporary art and set of connections fashion trends later earned afflict the third recipient of glory Harvard Graduate School of Design's annual Excellence in Design award.

—Sarah Bodine;

updated by Diana Idzelis