Comme des Garçons RTW Spring 2024
It’s been a downbeat season dominated by safe collections, with a few brave contrarians such as Rei Kawakubo.
At her Comme des Garçons show on Friday evening, it felt like she could not stop herself from adding more zany prints, more color, more texture, more sparkle and more volume, adding up to some of the largest, strangest and most wondrous outfits seen so far this season.
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Even the shoes — either ankle boots or bulbous Salomon sneakers — swarmed with metal brooches and big gemstones. Models wore stiff, cartoonish bobs that resembled Kawakubo’s signature hairstyle, only rendered in jujube colors and foam-like materials.
“To break free of the gloomy present, I hope to present a bright and light future,” was the Japanese designer’s manifesto this season.
There was something uplifting and even humorous about the gargantuan Peter Pan collars; the trapeze shapes composed of coiled tubing, piled up like soft-serve ice cream, and the strange finale dresses that at first glance looked like they had chairs hanging off the front and back, and on the second an abstraction of a cardigan jacket à la Rue Cambon.
There was a playful, childlike quality to the collection, some dresses constructed by connecting what looked like three giant tote bags; others by joining several printed dresses — as simple as paper cutout ones — around a base of brightly colored, frothy tulle.
The silhouettes grew ever larger: some resembling a giant turtle; others a big conch shell. Here and there, Kawakubo added giant bows, or a child harness in candy colors.
Meredith Monk’s otherworldly wailing added another quirky layer to this mesmerizing display of dressmaking on steroids, and joy unleashed.
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Launch Gallery: Comme des Garcons RTW Spring 2024
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