Comme des Garçons AW14

Initial reaction:

An exercise in conceptualising and re-inventing the familiar.

References:

This season Rei Kawakubo cited 'monsters' as a starting point for creating her sculptural objects for the body, commenting: "It's not about the typical Monster you find in sci-fi and video games. The expression of the Monsters I have made has a much deeper meaning. The craziness of humanity, the fear we all have, the feeling of going beyond common sense, the absence of ordinariness, expressed by something extremely big, by something that could be ugly or beautiful. In other words, I wanted to question the established standards of beauty."

Conceptualising the average:

Casual wool cardigans in grey, black and beige were knotted and twisted, and eventually reconstructed on the body to form bulbous and slightly monstrous 3D silhouettes (each one engulfing her models). It was about Kawakubo's perversion of the familiar and sensibilities of comfort associated with her choice in fabrics. The everyday in pop culture infiltrated the show too – who would have thought they’d see Rihanna on the Comme front row?

Reminded us of:

Louise Bourgeois soft fabric works series and in many ways with this show, Rei Kawakubo approached fabrics in the same way as Bourgeois, as threads of memories re-formed to create something both personal and new.

How they wore it:

With smudged green lipstick across their faces – that drew on the slightly sinister, was this a look of suffocation? – and with stark white and black curled headpieces by Julien d'ys. The twisting of the hair mirrored the volume and shapes of the collection.