In a world driven by utility, fashion has long been expected to serve a clear purpose. Clothes cover the body, keep us warm, indicate status, and adhere to social norms. Comme Des Garcons But every so often, a designer comes along and disturbs this quiet agreement. Rei Kawakubo, the visionary behind Comme des Garçons, has made an entire career out of subverting form and redefining function. In her world, the button is not simply a tool to fasten a shirt; it is a symbol, a concept, a protest against the assumptions we make about the body, clothing, and society.
The Rebellion Woven Into Fabric
Comme des Garçons emerged in the 1970s, not as a brand that simply made clothes, but as a movement that posed philosophical questions through garments. From the start, Kawakubo rejected the idea that fashion must be flattering. Her early work introduced black as a disruptive color in a time when Paris runways favored opulence and sparkle. Her silhouettes were irregular, deconstructed, and at times even grotesque to the traditional eye. But therein lay their power.
Buttons, seams, collars, and sleeves—elements that were previously considered merely technical or decorative—were repositioned and reimagined. Shirts were designed with buttons that led to nowhere, jackets folded inwards rather than wrapping around the body, and dresses hung off-kilter, as if in rebellion against the very body they were meant to adorn. In doing so, Kawakubo signaled that form itself could be a mode of resistance.
Beyond Function: The Poetry of Uselessness
The idea that a button could be useless may seem frustrating in everyday terms, but in the language of avant-garde fashion, it’s profoundly poetic. Kawakubo doesn’t design clothes for comfort or ease. She’s not trying to cater to mass appeal. Instead, she’s asking us to reconsider why clothes must conform to bodies in a specific way and why beauty must align with utility. When a button forgets its function, it transforms into something else—a metaphor, a question, a silent protest.
A jacket from the Comme des Garçons Fall/Winter 2012 collection, for instance, featured dozens of oversized buttons scattered across a sculptural silhouette, none of which served to fasten the garment. They dangled like punctuation marks on a sentence with no grammar, asking the viewer to rethink the very essence of clothing. These elements mocked the idea of design norms and invited the audience into a dialogue about art, expression, and the absurdity of functionality.
Deconstruction as Political Commentary
The choice to strip a garment of its practical role is inherently political. Deconstruction in fashion isn’t merely an aesthetic; it’s a commentary on the systems that shape our perception. Rei Kawakubo’s refusal to adhere to the logic of mainstream fashion serves as a metaphor for resisting social conformity. Her clothes challenge gender norms, body ideals, and the capitalist drive for consumption.
Each Comme des Garçons show is like entering an alternate dimension where logic dissolves and imagination reigns. Her Spring/Summer 1997 “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” collection distorted silhouettes with bulbous, padded shapes, radically altering the female form. The garments were not meant to flatter but to confront the viewer with the absurdity of beauty standards. Buttons, seams, and zippers were often placed arbitrarily, as if to say that the logic of construction does not have to define the experience of the garment.
This is protest—not with signs or slogans, but with stitches and seams. When function is erased, form becomes the language of resistance.
The Audience as Interpreter
Comme des Garçons does not handhold its audience. There is no direct narrative, no clear theme offered. Instead, each collection acts as a Rorschach test, forcing the viewer to confront their biases, assumptions, and tastes. This intellectual engagement is rare in fashion, a field often accused of superficiality. But Kawakubo treats fashion as a serious cultural text.
A shirt with misplaced buttons or a dress that folds in on itself might seem confusing at first, even alienating. But this discomfort is precisely the point. It asks, what do we expect from our clothes? Comfort? Confidence? Gender identity? Social signaling? By disrupting these expectations, Comme des Garçons turns the act of dressing into a philosophical practice.
The wearer of these garments is not just wearing fashion; they’re embodying a question, performing a critique. The clothes don’t exist to serve them, but to challenge them.
Beauty in the Abnormal
Rei Kawakubo has said that she seeks to make “beautiful things that aren’t.” This paradox captures the essence of her work. Her garments are often described as difficult, ugly, or unwearable. But these descriptions only reflect the limitations of our cultural vocabulary around beauty. When buttons don’t button and dresses don’t dress, we’re forced to find new language—both verbal and visual—for what is considered worthy of attention.
In doing so, Kawakubo expands the definition of beauty to include the misshapen, the asymmetrical, the broken, the abnormal. She reminds us that there is dignity and meaning in things that do not work the way they’re supposed to, and that failure—design failure, functional failure, aesthetic failure—can itself be generative.
Comme des Garçons in the Age of Mass Replication
In an era where fast fashion dominates and every new trend is instantly copied and mass-produced, Comme des Garçons remains resolutely singular. The brand resists replication not only through its complexity of design but through its philosophical opacity. You can copy a silhouette, but you can’t mass-produce intent.
Kawakubo’s approach acts as a direct rebuke to the commodification of fashion. Her pieces are not just difficult to wear; they are difficult to understand. They slow the viewer down, force contemplation, and resist the very idea of immediacy that defines modern consumerism.
This is fashion that asks for time. And in asking for time, it demands respect.
Conclusion: The Protest of the Inanimate
When buttons forget their function, they begin to speak. When zippers lead nowhere, they begin to symbolize. Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons have turned the everyday components of clothing into vehicles of abstraction, resistance, and philosophical inquiry. Comme Des Garcons Converse This is not fashion as ornament or even fashion as identity. This is fashion as revolt—quiet, sculptural, and deeply intelligent.
In a world where everything is expected to perform, to deliver, to serve a purpose, the refusal to function is a radical act. Through this refusal, Comme des Garçons has opened new possibilities for what clothing can mean, and who we might become when we wear it.
jasper
Madhappys