Wakubo Rei: Sublime To Classic Avant-Garde

In 80s, Yamamoto Teruji and Lssey Miyake rose on the stage of Paris.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1942, he studied art and literature at the Keio University, the oldest local university. After graduation, he became a cloth company and began to fashion design in 69 years.

In 1973, she was inspired by a French folk song to set up a fashion brand named Comme des Garcons (like a boy).

In 1981, the first fashion exhibition was launched in Paris. It took the lead in the massive use of "black" and ragged clippies to reflect the "poor, happy and hungry" beggar look, breaking the feminine and elegant dress, letting people know the asymmetry of fashion aesthetics, playing with pendant details, challenging the fabric's limits, and inspiring people's imagination potential for fashion.

41 years ago, Rei Kawakubo was founded.

Since its brand, it has been designing according to its own concept.

Rei Kawakubo has always liked to challenge traditional aesthetics. She introduced the idea of dress by blending, sewing the left half of a dress to the right part of another dress, and designing her classic scarf as an irregular skirt, all of which appeared in her last season's show.

For Rei Kawakubo, she is not just designing clothes, but expressing her opinions and ideas.

The 68 year old Rei Kawakubo brings inspiration to many designers such as Azzedine Alaia, John Galliano and so on. Now she works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and she has joked that she is living by design.

Rei Kawakubo also played a great role in the new look of fashion circles.

In the early 90s, cooperation in fashion circles was limited to inviting a model to shoot publicity photos. At that time, Rei Kawakubo invited Junya Watanabe to design a series of Commedes Garcons brands.

In 2004, she founded the Dover Street Market in London. Since then, Rei Kawakubo has opened 17 independent boutiques, and has cooperated with the high street brand such as H&M, which has been snapped up, and now there are as many as 120 stores in the world.

Next March, a 7 story Dover Street Market will open in the shopping district of Tokyo, Japan.

Rei Kawakubo looks like architects and interior designers in many ways. She always wears black clothes and is very demanding.

Rei Kawakubo said: "all kinds of business models should exist to cater for different tastes and needs. We need strong design and fast fashion like high street brand.

But if all aspects of fashion turn into democratization of technology, I will feel very hopeless.

What I want to express is a sense of expressing my emotions from different angles.

In order to expand the business of Commedes Garcons, I need to use various strategies.

The most important point is to find inspiration for new design.

In collaboration with H&M, I would like to see how the Commedes Garcons brand takes the effect of the mass line, although it is a great success, but I won't try the second.

I created absolute freedom for Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara, so that they could design their own series.

Commedes Garcons brand is not only seeking new design, but also developing a new retail strategy.

Dover Street Market, Trading Museum, Good Design Shop are all good attempts.

Rei Kawakubo hopes to deliver the idea of Dover Street Market to all parts of the world. London and Beijing have already begun to try, then Tokyo will enter the US market in the future.

Rei Kawakubo also plans to open 37 independent guerrilla shops in 5 years and work together in the world's little-known and non fashion sectors.

Through cooperation with these people, and opening only 1 years in these places can greatly limit the investment of shops, inject new ideas into the retail industry, and can bring a lot of sales.

Rei Kawakubo says that he doesn't like the fashion world today. Too many people want only cheap, fast fashion clothes. Everyone's clothes are becoming more and more consistent, which will greatly damage the designer's desire to design.

The fashion industry must not be lack of creativity, design clothes that can arouse people's sympathy, make people want to wear such clothes, and have these clothes at the moment. This is fashion.