{"id":3471,"date":"2016-04-22T16:51:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T20:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2019-09-27T11:51:08","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T15:51:08","slug":"word-worthy-women-names-you-should-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/2016\/04\/22\/word-worthy-women-names-you-should-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Word-Worthy Women: Names You Should Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rei_kawakubo_2814_620x\"<\/a>Rei Kawakubo (1942-)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kawakubo is considered one of the world’s most influential designers, as you can see from the long list of books we have on her work. Her garments are conceptual, unconventional, and grounded in her belief in gender neutrality. She credits her lack of conventional fashion training for the architectural playfulness her clothes display.<\/p>\n

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The ‘Lumps and Bumps’ collection, Spring\/Summer 1997<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Although she studied fine arts and literature at Keio University, her first job out of university was at a textile company. She worked at first as a freelance stylist in 1967. She went on to found Comme des Garcons in Tokyo in 1973, because she couldn’t find the kind of clothes she wanted to use in her photo shoots. In a recent, rare interview, she explained that she strives: “to create something new, something that didn’t exist before.” She continues that “the more experience I have and the more clothes I make, the more difficult it becomes to make something new. Once I’ve made something, I don’t want to do it again, so the breadth of possibility is becoming smaller.” (WWD<\/em>, 2011, Jan 4: 1, 8-9)<\/p>\n

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Comme des Garcons came to prominence in the 1980s as part of the group including Kenzo, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake. Each designer had opened stores in Paris by 1978, and in 1981 Yamamoto and Kawakubo put on a small runway show together, in order to maximize their impact. While not intending to be seen as a group, these designers brought a different aesthetic to western fashion: monochromatic, assymentrical, interested in geometric forms, not body display. Their work was immediately hailed as avante-garde and deconstructive of the western-fashion concepts, even while their presentations in Paris legitimized their status as international fashion designers. Kawakubo continued to open shops in international fashion cities. She gave the WWD<\/em> interview above while she was in Beijing to open her store there.<\/p>\n

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