Why Paris Is Excited About the Return of Japanese Designers, Especially Comme des Garçons
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Feeling excited by the start of Paris Fashion Week?
You’re in excellent company.
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“It is exciting for me to see all kinds of people with interesting taste and a good eye together in Paris,” Rei Kawakubo, the maverick designer behind Comme des Garçons, told WWD. “But my aim remains always the same — to find something new, whenever and wherever it is.”
For a very lucky few, that time and place is Oct. 1 at 5 p.m. in Paris, when the designer shows her spring 2023 Comme des Garçons collection.
It will mark Kawakubo’s first live show in the French capital in two years, with the coronavirus pandemic having forced her and other members of the Japanese fashion contingent to stage small shows in Tokyo, or do digital unveilings.
“Finally,” exclaimed jewelry designer and fashion collector Michelle Elie, expressing her delight at Kawakubo’s return and the “real feeling that the cult [of creativity] still exists.”
When attending the shows of Comme des Garçons or Noir Kei Ninomiya, an acolyte of Kawakubo’s, “you feel like you experience something relevant culturally,” Elie added, citing a growing divide between brands where “it’s about who is wearing the clothes and presenting the clothes, not the creation,” and designers like Kawakubo, where there are “no celebrities [and] it’s about the creation of the clothes, [with] a simple presentation that highlights that.”
“I feel like the ideas are limitless” when attending these shows, enthused Lauren Amos, an Atlanta, Georgia-based retailer whose personal collection includes pieces from Comme des Garçons, Ninomiya, Junya Watanabe and a slew of avant-garde designers.
The retailer lauded designers who seem unafraid of “being vulnerable, taking a risk and putting it out there” and “have a language but [are] so consistently pushing themselves,” like Kawakubo.
In her opinion, “this world would be a lot more boring” without “the people out there taking the risks — the Japanese [designers] or whoever.”
Many of those designers will enliven Paris Fashion Week, which runs through Oct. 4, and also be showcased in the upcoming “Mirror Mirror” exhibition in Antwerp.
Opening in October at the MoMu Fashion Museum, “Mirror Mirror” will explore interconnections between fashion, psychology, self-image and identity, and contains pieces from Amos and Elie’s personal archives.
After Issey Miyake’s death in August at the age of 86, there’s certainly “a sentiment of a void,” and “of being at a rather important step in the career of [Rei Kawakubo],” opined Alexandre Samson, fashion historian and curator at the Palais Galliera fashion museum in Paris.
He is “intrigued” ahead of Kawakubo’s Oct. 1 return, having been left with the impression that Kawakubo’s shows away from Paris were “not manifestos but models in waiting,” and an expression of “how frustrated and angry she felt at not being able to show in Paris.”
This season also feels momentous as the Issey Miyake brand will present the seventh collection by incumbent designer Satoshi Kondo, who was tasked with continuing the founder’s design and know-how after 15 years working alongside him.
And while the Y’s brand has discretely marked its 50th anniversary with a collection and unveiled a collaboration with British photographer Max Vadukul involving archive images, it is understood that Yohji Yamamoto wouldn’t be looking back on his five decades of design on the runway of his eponymous label, owing to his forward-looking philosophy.
His spring show is scheduled for Sept. 30. Meanwhile, the company is planning events and special projects around Y-3’s 20th anniversary.
To be sure, the moment seems ripe to reflect on the contribution of Japanese designers, especially as their ever-expanding body of work and presence made them reference points in the face of a troubling geopolitical context, while maintaining a reassuring vision of “financial and creative independence,” according to Samson.
If the French fashion scene saw the arrival of Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons in the ’80s as “a major boon,” as Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode’s executive president Pascal Morand put it, their influence reached far further.
“If you speak to Martin Margiela and the Belgians, they say that they would have never created what they did without the Japanese [designers],” and by extrapolation “no Demna and not even [Alessandro] Michele,” Samson argued.
“We are truly in a movement of designers who are all looking up to someone. That ‘someone’ is Rei Kawakubo, it’s Yohji Yamamoto and, of course, Issey Miyake, albeit in a more technical, different way,” he continued, calling Kawakubo “the key to understanding the last 30 years of contemporary creation.”
Samson attributes the longevity and sustained relevance of Kawakubo and her contemporaries to “a formidable balance between creation, creativity and a pragmatism about clothes,” that allowed them to adapt their runway visions in commercially viable proposals.
“That’s what makes magic, because you don’t project into a fantasy, you project into clothes that can be in store” and on the streets, he continued.
“[They] found something in Paris in terms of freedom, prospection, cultural space that matched what [the city] wanted from this type of designer — being rooted in something classic, even traditional and, at the same time, possessing a true creative and original vision,” surmised Olivier Gabet, director of the decorative arts department at the Louvre Museum and formerly director of Les Arts Décoratifs.
But don’t just label them “the Japanese designers” as a shortcut to talk about their aesthetics, the historians urged.
“There are identities, very singular universes, points of views that are absolutely different,” Samson pointed out. Gabet likewise cautioning against trying to read their works solely from the perspective of a shared nationality.
Kawakubo told WWD in 1983 that she was “not very happy to be classified as another Japanese designer. There is no one characteristic that all Japanese designers have.…What I do is not influenced by what’s happened before in fashion or by a community cultural influence.”
There certainly is no shortage of international talents, from Japan and everywhere else, throwing their hats in the Parisian ring. Gabet pointed out that today’s design and creative scene in Paris is flourishing across all artistic practices.
“[It’s] an incredible playground between public institutions, private initiatives, foundations, galleries,” Gabet said of the French capital today, adding that “being in a place where there is so much diversity [means designers] don’t have to align themselves under any specific labels so they can be themselves.”
Like their forerunners, the wave of designers from Japan who have arrived in the past decade — ranging from CDG alum Ninomiya to Beautiful People and Mame Kurogouchi — “allow us commentators to understand the ‘Japanese school’ does not exist in reality,” Samson said.
Having all these very different designers choose Paris is “still very reassuring for the [French] capital and the platform it represents” and flattering given they could show in other fashion capitals, Samson said.
The French fashion federation’s president Bruno Pavlovsky agreed that Paris has maintained its “reputation as a magnet for global talent.”
Gabet noted one common trait shared by designers hailing from Japan: a knack for “never abdicating the creative [side] while [finding] great success.”
“And today, being successful is being visible…and being where it happens,” even if the Paris scene might feel crowded, he added. “It puts you in a position to be seen, looked at and heard.”
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