Comme des Garcons: A Retrospective of Mainstream Avant-Garde

In the context of the recently released Comme des Garcons X H&M collaboration, which seemed to be a wild success for a reason I cannot really fathom, I began to think about what I admire most in the brand and its visionary, Rei Kawakubo. She is not my favorite designer, but as a social and cultural architect who can mold the audience of the moment to her vision, the CdG corporation excels in its Warholian methods of operation.

Her designs, and the clothes themselves, are not consistently on a level of quality adhered to by a Yohji Yamamoto or Issey Miyake in his prime, to compare her to her contemporaries. Yet CdG is probably the most successful of this trio - Rei has been a master of invention and reinvention. More importantly, the value of the CdG brand name may have diluted amongst purists, but from a commercial standpoint, her openness to work with every and practically anyone has managed to keep an avant-garde design house relevant and at the center of attention going on three decades now. Whilst Yohji's signature lines are appreciated mainly by a niche audience (I do not include Y-3 in a discussion of Yohji as a designer), and the current Issey Miyake even more so, CdG still feels young and fresh, as if it was an upstart brand from the present decade.

The H&M collaboration was probably partly bought by young admirers of CdG, for whom the main lines are out of affordable range. I wonder, though, how many people who lined up all night actually understood, appreciated and wore CdG history before this? Like the previous H&M designer collaborations, perhaps they were just trying to get something with a 'high end design' label attached to it. The designers who collaborated with H&M previously may have been of a higher profile than Rei in the mainstream fashion media. Yet the present collaboration is undoubtedly the smartest and most successful move so far by both parties, when viewed from a marketing standpoint. It has bridged the conceptual with the accessible, the abstract with the commonplace, meeting in a perfectly compromised middle. Like some of the CdG lower end diffusion lines, the pieces may maintain some trace of classic CdG 'traits' like deconstruction and asymmetry, but are ultimately disposable and lack the statement or technique that is usually reserved for the mainline. The clothes themselves, quality and craftsmanship aside, do touch on one point about CdG and Rei that I admire, and it is something more intangible.

Rei's collections are the only ones I can think of, amongst anyone known enough to have their runway shows featured on Style.com, that are entirely devoid of context and meaning. Rei has once admitted to not following what is going on in the fashion world around her. Hence, she operates outside the boundaries of trends or 'key' colors, fabrics and items that often times swing the collective design world's direction each season. Whether or not this is actually true, I'll probably never know. But unlike Raf Simons or Miuccia Prada, whose collections are the most scrutinized for some hint of meaning or intention amongst fashion followers on the internet, the media, the intellectuals, there is an unspeakably enigmatic quality that has remained constant throughout Rei's collections. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. But CdG has maintained a funny kind of appeal which resonates with me - I can't quite explain why I would be attracted to some of her designs, when I am - but at the same time, to intellectualize or explain her work is an exercise in futility. Rei contradictorily innovates in her appropriation of existing concepts. And that's why I think she succeeds – neither here nor there, the clothes just are, as if they were created out of pure whim. Bravo.