In 1981, when everyone else was wearing technicolored spandex and plastic baubles, Rei Kawakubo, the founder of uber-rad clothing line, Comme des Gar?on, was clothing her models in slashed up sculptures that were black from head-to-toe. Together with Junya Watanabe, the label has come to the limelight for presaging the moody colors of the grunged-out '90s and the deconstruction of contemporary design way back when everyone was too ecstatic doing step aerobics and listening to Cyndi Lauper to understand that a grayscale palatte and structural silhouettes make us look stylishly depressed and incidentally, extremely cool.
Currently, Kawakubo and Watanabe are speeding up the pace with their new marketing ploy, known as Guerilla Boutiques. Comme des Garcon is colonizing the rest of the world with their temporary stores, camping out in old warehouse spaces for a spare, sterile aesthetic that is conviniently inexpensive and easy to produce. The boutiques are open for about a year, then shut down forever. Leave it to a design house called Comme des Gar?on to know the infinite power of playing hard to get.
