Having just watched The First Monday In May (scroll down a little to read my view on this), I was alert to the announcement of next year’s statement fashion exhibition from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (and subject of The Gala Dinner on The First Monday etc.) and was pretty excited to see that it is to feature Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons.
In their exhibition overview, the Met say:
The Costume Institute’s spring 2017 exhibition will examine the work of Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, known for her avant-garde designs and ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and fashionability. The thematic show will feature approximately 120 examples of Kawakubo’s womenswear for Comme des Garçons, from her first Paris runway show in 1981 to her most recent collection.
The galleries will illustrate the designer’s revolutionary experiments in “in-betweenness”—the space between boundaries. By situating her designs within and between dualities such as East/West, male/female, and past/present, Kawakubo probes their rigidity and artificiality to resolve and dissolve them. Mannequins will be arranged at eye level, with no physical barriers, to collapse the usual distance between museum visitors and the designs on display.
Wow. As a huge Kawakubo admirer, my best hope of seeing this is that, like the McQueen exhibition, it may transfer to London within a year or two. My outside hope is to get across to New York between May 4 and September 4, 2017 – is it bad to secretly wish that D might get made redundant so we have time and leisure to do this? It probably is bad, isn’t it …
In the meantime, hands together for a little Rei-appreciation on this blog …
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