Comme des Garçons

In a world where fashion oscillates between fleeting trends and commercial predictability, Comme des Garcons (CdG) stands as a defiant monument to creativity, challenging the very essence of what clothing can mean. Founded in 1969 by Rei Kawakubo, a self-taught designer who once claimed she “didn’t know how to make clothes,” the brand has spent five decades dismantling norms, redefining beauty, and reshaping the cultural landscape. This is not merely a story of fabric and thread—it is a manifesto for rebellion, a chronicle of how one woman’s uncompromising vision transformed fashion into a medium of profound artistic expression.

The Birth of an Anti-Fashion Movement

Rei Kawakubo launched Comme des Garçons (“Like the Boys”) in Tokyo at a time when Japan’s fashion identity was synonymous with imitation. The post-war era had seen the country embrace Western aesthetics, but Kawakubo rejected mimicry. Drawing from Japan’s wabi-sabi philosophy—the acceptance of imperfection and transience—she began crafting garments that defied symmetry, rejected color, and celebrated raw edges. Her early work, sold in a tiny Tokyo boutique, was a quiet revolt against the ornate femininity of 1970s fashion.

The brand’s international breakthrough came in 1981 with its Paris debut, a collection so radical it was dubbed “Hiroshima Chic” by critics. Models draped in black, asymmetrical garments with exposed seams and jagged hems walked like shadows, their forms obscured by fabric that seemed to swallow the body. The show was a sensory shockwave, redefining “ugliness” as a new kind of beauty. Kawakubo’s designs weren’t clothes; they were questions. What is fashion’s purpose? Who decides what is wearable?

The 1990s: Deconstructing the Body

By the ’90s, CdG had evolved into a laboratory of radical ideas. Kawakubo’s 1997 “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” collection became a watershed moment. Garments bulged with padded humps, distorting the human silhouette into grotesque, tumor-like forms. Critics accused her of mocking disability; supporters hailed it as a critique of society’s obsession with the “ideal” body. Kawakubo remained silent, letting the clothes speak: Beauty is not a shape—it is a feeling.

This era also saw CdG expand beyond womenswear. The Homme line, launched in 1978, reimagined menswear with fluid tailoring, floral prints, and draped fabrics, challenging rigid gender codes long before “genderless fashion” entered the lexicon.