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Rei Kawakubo was presented with the Harvard Excellence in Design Award on May 4th, 2000. The Graduate School of Design presented the exhibition "Structure+Expression COMME des GARCONS", at Gund Hall Gallery May 4-31, 2000. On the Work of Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garcons Rei Kawakubo was chosen to receive this year's Excellence in design award because she has consistently pushed the boundaries of fashion and redefined the way we think about clothes. While Kawakubo is best known for her fashion design, or "clothes-making" as she would probably prefer to call it, her artistic vision encompasses many other areas of design, from graphics to packaging, to costume and exhibition design, to furniture, and to the architecture of the Comme des Garcons retail spaces. For many, Kawakubo's arrival in the West, with the first Paris presentation of her collection in 1981, was something of a shock. She presented clothes the challenged accepted conventions of fashion, beauty, gender, and taste. The early monochrome collections allowed Kawakubo to focus on the form and shape of her garments, aspects that have remained extremely important for her. While often thought of as an iconoclast, Kawakubo has exerted an undeniable influence on younger generations of avant-garde designers. It is almost easier to describe the work of Comme des Garcons in terms associated with architecture than with the traditional vocabulary of fashion. Kawakubo's clothes are architectonic or sculptural, concentrating on structure rather than surface. The garments are constructed and assembled, rather like a building, and because they are almost always spatial in nature they require a body to inhabit them, to supply the missing volume--often they are inconceivable without the body and, for this reason, are often much better off the rack and on the body. The work of Comme des Garcons results from complex pattern-making, experimentation with textiles natural and synthetic, combinations of patterns and materials, out-of-the-ordinary uses of ordinary materials, and above all impecable craftsmanship. Certain ideas are tested, abstracted, and transformed to create something new and astonishing with each collection. Ragged seams become ruffles. Yards and yards of ruffles. Ruffles appear in unexpected places poking out of seams. Holes in sweaters become gashes in the bodices of evening dresses. Jackets are dismantled and turned inside-out or put together in new ways. The inside of a cardigan becomes the outside with the bumpy texture of knitted roses close to the body. Or perhaps it is the other way around. One never knows.
Brooke Hodge
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