Ensemble

Design House Comme des Garçons Japanese
Designer Rei Kawakubo Japanese

Not on view

The hidden supportive understructures of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century womenswear often inform the work of contemporary designers, who have translated inner layers of shaping into outer ornament. Here, Rei Kawakubo elaborates on the form of an 1880s bustle, originally meant to emphasize one zone of the body, to create a skirt with an entirely new, lobed silhouette. Kawakubo's use of white lace recalls the delicate embellishment of lingerie—a further transformation of the intimate into the conspicuous.

Ensemble, Comme des Garçons (Japanese, founded 1969), (a) plastic (foam); (b) acrylic, nylon; (c) rayon, cotton/polyester, viscose rayon; (d, e) cotton, plastic (polyurethane), Japanese

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