Dress

Designer Rei Kawakubo Japanese

fall/winter 2012–13

Not on view

Since founding Comme des Garçons ("like some boys") in 1969, the Tokyo-based designer Rei Kawakubo has consistently defined and redefined the aesthetics of our time. Season after season, collection after collection, she upends conventional notions of beauty and disrupts accepted characteristics of the fashionable body. This dress of polyester felt from Kawakubo's autumn/winter 2012–13 collection "2 Dimensions" was designed to blur the boundaries between the body and the dress. The bold, primary colors and flat, outsize silhouette challenges the rules of age-appropriate dressing but also engages the concept of kawaii (cuteness) - a key aspect of Japanese popular culture defined by playfulness and performativity.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Exhibition History

Title: Dress
Design House: Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969)
Designer: Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942)
Date: fall/winter 2012–13
Culture: Japanese
Medium: polyester, cotton
Credit Line: Gift of Comme des Garçons, 2014
Object Number: 2014.134
Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute

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