In an industry often accused of prioritizing spectacle over substance, Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garcons exists as a defiant counter-narrative—a brand that treats clothing not as adornment but as a dialectic. Since its inception in 1969, the label has operated at the intersection of art, activism, and existential inquiry, challenging the very notion of what fashion can mean. As the world grapples with political upheaval, environmental collapse, and the numbing sameness of algorithmic culture, Kawakubo’s Fall 2025 collections feel less like runway shows and more like urgent dispatches from the frontlines of creativity.
The Avant-Garde as a Language of Resistance
Kawakubo’s work has never been content with mere aesthetics. Her designs are polemics, interrogating power structures, cultural conformity, and the human condition. The Fall 2025 women’s ready-to-wear collection, “Small Can Be Mighty,” exemplifies this ethos. Opening with a procession of models swathed in distorted, oversized menswear fabrics—pinstripes twisted into knots, gray flannel contorted into grotesque silhouettes—the show felt like a direct critique of corporate monotony. These shapes, reminiscent of the “salaryman” uniform, evoked the suffocating rigidity of patriarchal systems. Yet, as the collection unfolded, the harsh lines dissolved into a riot of femininity: blood-red tulle cascading over satin bodices, velvet crinolines ballooning like defiant clouds, and armor-like shoulders softened by delicate lace.
The tension between structure and chaos was deliberate. Kawakubo’s soundtrack—a haunting chorus of Bulgarian folk singers—echoed the resilience of collective labor, a nod to grassroots movements challenging corporate giants. Adrian Joffe, Kawakubo’s husband and CEO of Comme des Garçons, later explained that the collection was a “love letter to small-scale creativity,” embodied by the brand’s Dover Street Market, a retail haven that has championed independent designers for two decades. Here, Kawakubo’s message was clear: true power lies not in scale, but in the audacity to imagine differently.
War, Peace, and the Theater of Absurdity
If the women’s collection was a rebellion against capitalism, the Homme Plus Fall 2025 line, “To Hell With War,” was a visceral scream against militarism. Kawakubo has long used menswear to dissect masculinity, but this season, she weaponized it. Military uniforms—once symbols of order—were subverted into chaotic hybrids: olive drab jackets sprouted floral linings, combat boots curled upward like clowns’ shoes, and army helmets dripped with satin turbans. Models with braided hair and smudged eyeliner stalked the runway to Nina Simone’s “Wild Is the Wind,” their outfits a collision of aggression and tenderness.
The collection’s genius lay in its contradictions. Raw, unfinished seams evoked the brutality of conflict, while pastel woolens and jacquard florals whispered of fragile hope. A trench coat, sliced open to reveal a quilted interior of peace-sign patches, became a metaphor for vulnerability beneath armor. Kawakubo, who rarely grants interviews, let the clothes speak: war is not just violence—it is absurdity, a senseless rupture of humanity.
Spring 2025: Dancing on the Edge of Collapse
Earlier in the year, Kawakubo’s Spring 2025 collection, “Uncertain Future,” grappled with global instability. The show opened with models encased in fiberglass-like white shells, their bodies constrained by rigid, architectural forms resembling ancient relics. As the procession continued, these carapaces cracked open, revealing garments that oscillated between protection and suffocation: puffer gowns inflated like life rafts, metal mesh veils swaddling faces, and sleeves so voluminous they seemed to swallow the wearer.
Hidden within folds and seams were fragments of protest slogans: “Protect Our…,” “No More…,”—phrases deliberately truncated, as if censored. Kawakubo’s commentary was oblique but unmistakable: in an era of climate crisis, political fracturing, and algorithmic alienation, the future is a precarious dance between resilience and collapse. Yet, even in this bleakness, there was beauty. A finale of quilted silk jacquard dresses, their surfaces shimmering like shattered glass, suggested that fragility itself could be a form of strength.
Collaborations: Alchemy of the Unexpected
Comme des Garcons collaborations have always been less about profit and more about cultural alchemy. The brand’s partnership with Nike, now in its third decade, reached new heights in Fall 2025 with the release of the Field General sneaker. Stripped of color and adorned with warped co-branding, the design mirrored Kawakubo’s subversion of sportswear tropes—a rejection of hype-driven excess in favor of stark minimalism. Earlier in the year, the CDG BLACK x Nike Air Force 1 Low reimagined the iconic sneaker with abstract, inkblot-like graphics, transforming a streetwear staple into a canvas for existential ambiguity.
These projects are part of a larger pattern. From the 2017 Supreme collaboration that plastered anarchic graphics on boxy hoodies to the ongoing Comme des Garçons Parfums line—which includes the cult fragrance “Odeur 53,” famously described as smelling of “dust on a lightbulb”—Kawakubo treats partnerships as conceptual art. Even commerce, she insists, can be a site of rebellion.
Dover Street Market: A Cathedral of Chaos
Beyond clothing, Kawakubo’s most radical act may be Dover Street Market (DSM), the avant-garde retail concept she launched in 2004. More than a store, DSM is a living collage of creativity, where emerging designers share space with established names like Gucci and Balenciaga. The London flagship, a labyrinth of mismatched textures and immersive installations, reflects Kawakubo’s belief in “beautiful chaos.” For Fall 2025, the store’s windows featured mannequins suspended in mid-air, tangled in webs of yarn and LED lights—a visual echo of the season’s themes of entanglement and liberation.
DSM’s ethos—non-hierarchical, interdisciplinary, defiantly odd—has reshaped retail. It is a physical manifestation of Kawakubo’s worldview: creativity thrives not in isolation, but in collision.
The Cassandra of Fashion: Prophecies in Pleats
Kawakubo has often been called fashion’s Cassandra—a prophetess whose warnings go unheeded until they materialize as reality. In the 1980s, her “Hiroshima Chic” collection, with its tattered fabrics and asymmetrical cuts, foreshadowed the deconstructionist movement. In the 2000s, her exploration of genderless clothing predated today’s nonbinary fashion wave. Now, as the industry reckons with AI-generated designs and homogenized trends, her Fall 2025 collections feel eerily prescient. The juxtaposition of corporate critique and whimsical femininity—tutus exploding from tailored blazers, bows devouring sleeves—suggests a path forward: fashion as a site of joy and dissent.
The Unseen Hand: Crafting a Legacy
Kawakubo’s influence extends far beyond her own label. Designers like Martin Margiela, Rick Owens, and Demna Gvasalia cite her as a foundational force. Her 2017 Met Gala exhibition, “Art of the In-Between,” cemented her status as a bridge-builder between fashion and fine art. Yet, for all her acclaim, Kawakubo remains an enigma. She avoids interviews, rarely appears in public, and once stated, “I don’t like to look back.” This elusiveness only amplifies her mystique, positioning her as a ghost in the machine of an industry obsessed with visibility.
Her business model, too, defies convention. Comme des Garçons operates as a constellation of sub-labels—PLAY, SHIRT, BLACK—each catering to different aesthetics while maintaining a cohesive rebellion. Unlike brands reliant on seasonal markdowns, Kawakubo’s pieces often appreciate in value, becoming cult objects traded in underground fashion forums.
Conclusion: The Unbroken Thread
Rei Kawakubo’s genius defies categorization. She is a designer who rejects the title of “artist,” a recluse who commands global influence, a provocateur who embeds hope in despair. Her work asks uncomfortable questions: What does it mean to be human in a mechanized world? Can clothing be a weapon? Is beauty possible in brokenness?
As the lights dim on another Paris Fashion Week, one truth remains: Comme des Garçons is not a brand—it is a revolution stitched into seams, a whisper of what fashion could be if it dared to dream louder. In Kawakubo’s hands, every frayed edge, every distorted silhouette, becomes a promise: there is power in the unseen, the unfinished, and the unresolved.
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