Highlighting Japanese Fashion: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kuwakubo (Part Two)

January 10th, 2012 at 02:00pm Erica

Welcome back to MAD’s look at Japan’s most creative fashion designers, in honor of our show, Beauty in All Things. In my last post, I took a look at Issey Miyake’s and Yohji Yamamoto’s incredible designs. For this post, I will discuss the fabulous Rei Kuwabuko, the name behind the Commes des Garcons house for over 40 years!

Kuwabuko’s work is less about color and patterns (a consistent theme with these three designers is the prevalence of black), and more about the subversion of the garment: her work is often asymmetrical, unfinished and often startlingly malformed. A popular example is her Apron Dress (spring/summer 1999), which gapes open in the back, sides held together by a giant silver safety pin.

Kuwakubo’s clothing is more akin to conceptual studies of shape and form, which challenge traditional ideals of beauty. Although the looks are often regarded as haute couture, Kuwakubo’s works have also found a home on the streets of Tokyo, where young people incorporate her looks into a half-fantasy, half-militant type of everyday dressing up, as you can see by her collection for H&M in 2008.

The works of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kuwabuko prove how the Japanese consistently bridge the gap between art and design in their creations, working to instill and aesthetic understanding and appreciation of a variety of materials, forms and processes. This is also the goal of all the artists in MAD’s ongoing show on contemporary Japanese design, ‘Beauty in All Things.’ Come by to see it for yourselves!

The works of these three designers can be found on their individual websites, but for more information, see the 2010-11 show at FIT Japan Fashion Now! , the Barbican Art Gallery show Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, and the digital archives  at the Kyoto Costume Institute.

Entry Filed under: beauty in all things