Ensemble

Designer Rei Kawakubo Japanese

spring/summer 1991

Not on view

Since founding Comme des Garçons ("like some boys") in 1969, the Tokyo-based designer Rei Kawakubo has consistently defined and redefined the aesthetics of her time. Collection after collection, she upends conventional notions of beauty and disrupts accepted characteristics of the fashionable body. Kawakubo’s spring/summer 1991 collection, “Ink Dye, Stained Glass,” deviated from the outsized silhouettes, consistent black palette, and intentionally destroyed garments that characterized her 1980s collections. Rather than obscure the body with excess fabric, Kawakubo used chiffons, mousselines, and stretch synthetics in long, narrow silhouettes that followed and revealed the form. The collection was designed to project calm and lightness in response to global conflict during the period. The stained glass group of ensembles from the collection are printed with images of medieval stained glass from Chartres Cathedral and Laon Cathedral in France. This ensemble features a composite of images taken from the glass in the south rose window at Chartres.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Title: Ensemble
Design House: Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969)
Designer: Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942)
Date: spring/summer 1991
Culture: Japanese
Medium: polyester
Credit Line: Purchase, Funds from various donors, by exchange, 2017
Object Number: 2017.728a, b
Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute

More Artwork

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Suit, Comme des Garçons Japanese, linen, French — Suit
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