Rei Kawakubo’s 2017 Met Costume Institute’s Exhibit

Rei Kawakubo Met Exhibit 
The Met’s Costume Institute exhibit opens on the first Tuesday of every year. The first Monday of May is the Met Gala, the most prominent fashion party on the East Coast. Over the weekend, I could finally see the 2017 exhibit, Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons:  Art of the In-Between, before it closed on September 4, 2017.

The first time I’d ever heard of Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo was in 2009 when President Obama’s Social Secretary, Desirėe Rogers, received heavy criticism for her outfit choice at that year’s State Union.  Why?  There was a pretty big mishap: a couple (probably seeking notoriety) somehow gained entry into the exclusive White House state dinner. Everyone asked why Desiree wasn’t standing at the front door with her guest checklist. Instead, Ms. Rogers comfortably sat down and wore Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons line.

HISTORY

  The Japanese fashion designer is based in Tokyo and Paris. Rei was born in 1946 and is the founder of Comme des Garçons, French for “like boys.” The label started in 1969 and was established as a company in 1973. Her retail footprint encompasses over 300 shops, with 25% outside of Japan. According to the Business of Fashion, the company generated revenue for CDG and its affiliates over $280 million a year.

AWARDS
◊  Mainichi Design Prize in 1983 and 1987
◊  Veuve Cliquot Business Award, 1991

COLLABORATIONS

Levi’s Converse
Speedo
Nike
Moncler
Lacoste
Culter and Gross
Louis Vuitton ↑

In 2017, Rei Kawakubo, the second-only living fashion designer, was featured at the annual fundraiser exhibit since Yves Saint Laurent in 1983. The annual fashion show is typically featured in the Anna Wintour Costume Institute Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year, the fashion designer curated the unique austere, all-white maze presentation, and Andrew Bolton, the Costume’s Head Curator, was in another museum location.

Upon entry into the very crowded showcase Labor Day weekend, everyone offered a viewing guidebook titled Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. According to the booklet, nine expressions of “in-betweenness” in Kawakubo’s collections of 150 examples of works of art:

♦  Absence/Presence
♣  Design/Not Design
♦  Fashion/Anti-Fashion
◊  Model/Multiple
♦  High/Low
◊ Then/Now
♦ Self/Other
◊ Object/Subject
♦  Clothes/Non-Clothes

At the 2017 Met Gala, Rihanna did not disappoint.  As usual, the Bajan babe continued to embrace the annual theme. This year, she made her blockbuster appearance in a Comme des Garçons ensemble straight out of Rei’s archives. Oh, la la.  The thigh-high red lace-up DSquared sandals took one hour to lace up correctly but completed the look perfectly.

Previous exhibits were 2013 Punk Chaos to Couture in 2014, Charles James; 2015, China Through the Looking Glass; and 2016, Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age of Technology.

The Met provides a place to experience the power of art and fashion. I have looked forward to seeing the annual fashion curations every year since my daughter moved to the Big Apple. According to an article my daughter wrote at Refinery 29, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is considering fashion and religion-themed exhibits for 2018.

Thank you, Rei Kawakubo, for showing us that fashion is art.  The art of the in-between is art and fashion, conventional and unconventional.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed a peek at the 2017 Met Costume Institute’s Exhibit on Rei Kawakubo.  Let me know what you liked in the comments below.

Have a stylish and healthy week.