Comme des Gar?ons RTW Spring 2018

Bridget Foley

Updated October 1, 2017 at 5:23 PM

God forgive the double sacrilege, religious and artistic. (Seriously, God.) But of the highlights of spring 2018 so far, two are light years ahead of everything else: The Last Supper (a private viewing arranged by Vionnet’s Goga Ashkenazi.) and Comme des Gar?ons.

That’s not to suggest that Rei Kawakubo is Leonardo da Vinci, or that her models are Jesus and the Twelve. Only that Kawakubo clearly creates on a different level that the rest of the ready-to-wear world. She could just as easily show during couture or at some random time off-calendar that suits her creative fancy. While her stores are packed with clothes – real, functional, even sensible clothes – her runway features art.

Yes, there’s repetition – like every creator, Kawakubo has her signatures – and not every show awes. This spring show did. It proved her most intriguing since the remarkable “Future in Two Dimensions” show for fall 2012. Even the venue sent chills – the Russian Embassy, an imposing Cold War-era structure that had everyone going phone-camera crazy. (Its vast foyer may boast the only low ceiling in Paris.)

Whether there was a specific connection between venue and show motif is fodder for a cleverer Sherlock than this reviewer. More easily discernable: The show was brilliant. Kawakubo called it “Multidimensional Graffiti,” an apparent reference to the possibilities inherent when wildly unlike visual perspectives coexist. For her stunning array of fabrics, she appropriated the work of 10 different artists dating from the 16th century to today, from Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s masterfully wacky Bacchus-like portrait created from fruits and vegetables to works from e-Boy, a pixel art group established in 1997, and illustrator Stefan Marx. A rare languid item, a robe, featured right side-up and upside-down versions of one of Makoto Takahasi’s famous wide-eyed girls; a sculptural, cape-like number bearing a mesmerizing scenic by the Japanese Zen monk Sesson Shukei, also 16th-century.

Individually, most of these art works have nothing to do each other. Given the Kawakubo treatment, they coalesced into a moment of wonder, the wow factor heightening by ever-fascinating constructions that defy comprehension as much as description. The confounding, complicated beauty stunned.

But enough already. A gal’s got to make a living. Cue the footwear: a nifty boxing shoe on a small heel in collaboration with Nike. Leonardo would likely approve, himself not immune to the lure of a good accessory. In between his art commissions and out-there inventions like the flying machine, he also also designed a handbag.

Launch Gallery: Comme des Gar?ons RTW Spring 2018

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Comme des Gar?ons RTW Spring 2018