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Comme des Garçons: Life, Light and Shadow The figures were moving; meeting, but never touching. One was a perambulating white cloud of puffiness, blown into shape by stuffed bedroom pillows; the other smothered with white satin bows. Both models had their heads and faces covered in a lacy darkness.  Picture credit: Indigital Why in this Comme des Garçons show do they never touch, only turn, each voluminous figure just acknowledging the other’s existence like a passing shadow? Were they death and life walking slowly past one another? Perhaps one, at least, of each duo was approaching the final ending.  Picture credit: Indigital ”A ceremony of separation” were designer Rei Kawakubo’s words, spoken by her partner Adrian Joffe, for she never came out to respond to the cheers and tears that engulfed the long room where the show took place. There was no pretence of a happy ending. So a designer who once based a collection called “Broken Brides” on figures walking in sadness from the bridal altar has now turned her fashion art to the final ending.  Picture credit: Indigital Yet this was not a sad show from Kawakubo. Some of the individual pieces seemed joyous, with lace and leather mixed, or a hoop decorated with snowy white flakes and wool that looked like a fine knitted swaddle for a baby’s crib. That was a match for the baby’s dress seen flat on the front of one of the perambulating outfits. Deconstructed elements, especially for the headpieces, were inevitably present, but not in a torn or discarded way. And sturdy flat shoes kept the figures grounded. There were slightly more white than black coverings, with some bridging the negative and positive with lace and hose, both with a mottled shadow play.  Picture credit: Indigital But the mood was sombre in a sweet way, as the soundtrack swelled with the Max Richter neo-classical piece, “On The Nature of Daylight”. In the nature of life there is also death. But only an exceptional fashion artist is prepared to embrace it. (责任编辑：admin) |