SPIRITUAL WORLD. White is symbolic of prayer.
The lines above are transcribed directly from the note Rei Kawakubo wrote, and had translated into English to accompany—if not directly to explain—her Comme des Garçons Homme Plus show. Well, you knew what she was saying. Helpless before the state of the world, what can we do but pray?
Often, you come to Comme braced to be disturbed or intellectually poked by the feeling you’re failing to get something. (That, weird to say, is part of the thrill). Other times, one of Kawakubo’s shows can catch you off guard by just being funny. But this season, she judged that neither confrontation nor mirth were possible. If fashion has an emotional role to play, it’s to be gentle, calm, soothing.
As little as she communicates in words, Kawakubo conveyed that feeling through the contemplation of fuzzy, felted surfaces, cutaway jackets like shrunken cardigans and trousers (or anti-trousers) with voluminous, drapey folds. At some points, she did away with trousers and replaced them with white pleated skirts. Then came knitwear: soft cages, lacy baby-knit sweaters, worn with frilly, almost Victorian bloomers.
In a season of ubiquitously dark, sober tailoring, it was a respite of sorts to spend a half hour in Kawakubo’s world of alternative masculinity. Not everything she did was white. There were black and navy jackets, some of them embroidered with pearl buttons, not unlike the East London Pearly King folk tradition. There’s not even a shadow of toxic masculinity, militarism or aggression inside Rei Kawakubo’s woman-designed Comme des Garçons universe. If only that could be true of the world outside.