Object: Suit
Brand:
Comme des Garçons
(Japanese, founded 1969)
Designer:
Rei Kawakubo
(born 1942)
Date: Fall 1998
Medium: Wool and beige cotton canvas
Country: Japan
Credit Line: Museum purchase
Object number: 2003.60.2
DescriptionSuit in navy blue and dark red wool gabardine; navy cutaway jacket with attached vest and heathered beige grey wool / cotton hair canvas vest lining / lapels and bustle panel; skirt with dark red ankle length front panel with side pleats and grey wool / cotton hair canvas back, cutaway to hip
Label Text:This suit epitomizes deconstruction, one of the great fashion revolutions of the late 20th century. "Deconstructed" garments are often unfinished-looking, with loose, frayed hems and edges; they sometimes appear to be coming apart, or as if they were recycled or made from composite parts; and they are frequently dark in color, suggesting poverty, devastation, or degradation, while their silhouettes tend to obscure the body and lack clear frontality. As the pioneer of formalized deconstruction in high fashion, Rei Kawakubo (whose clothing label is Comme des Garçons) was reviled in the early 1980s, when she first presented her collections in Paris, but her deconstructed designs are now omnipresent on the global fashion runways
Exhibitions:
- Reinvention and Restlessness: Fashion in the Nineties
- The Tailor's Art
- Form Follows Fashion