Royal treatment: Comme des Garçons examines modern grandeur
For Spring-Summer 2027, Comme des Garçons spliced court dress and workwear, triggering a reflection on status, self-coronation and contemporary behaviour. Anders Christian Madsen reviews the show.
“Must be the reason why I’m king of my castle. Must be a reason why I’m making examples of you.” The Wamdue Project’s eternal words echoed into the night as Comme des Garçons released Rei Kawakubo’s season statement post-show: “When royal life and everyday life become one,” it read, with typical loaded brevity. With her giant creations, Kawakubo has a way of making examples of us: putting a mastodon mirror up to her audience. Thinking about it as you do after a Comme des Garçons experience, the juxtaposition she staged between her crowned, regal silhouettes and the workingman’s denim from which they were largely constructed felt like a kind of blurring of hierarchy.
Crowns, inflated skirts and regal volumes suggested court dress, but Kawakubo built much of that grandeur from denim, canvas and other fabrics associated with work and utility. The result was less about dressing like royalty than collapsing the distance between the throne and the street. Nowadays, ordinary life is increasingly behaving like royal life, what with everyone curating, broadcasting and mythologising themselves. In politics, on social media and all the corners of daily life, status, ceremony and self-coronation have migrated into everyday behaviour.
Through that lens, the point on the narrow Comme des Garçons runway when Kawakubo’s models had to pass each other in their sizeable looks became all the more loaded. The territorial, self-entitled manners generated by the self-coronation of popular culture, where everyone is king of their castle, havecreated a climate that lacks the courtesy and cordiality of the old world. We’re literally not getting out of the way for one another. Kawakubo’s ability to trigger so much reflection from shape, fabric and proportion is the enduring brilliance of Comme des Garçons. She impacts your way of seeing.
With various protests and parades making it impossible to get around Paris, the house had to wait for people to arrive as temperatures within the illuminated box steadily climbed to a clammy high. “It was really hot in this room, but it was about air! You got it, right?” Vanhée quipped post-show. She based her wardrobe of clarity on ideas of air: “The way the air transports and the way air drapes. It was this intersection of pragmatism – a summery wardrobe – mixed with this metaphor of freedom. We need to breathe, we need to expand. I mean, we’re living it,” she said, gesturing at the hot show space. “That’s the pragmatism.” This Hermès show was real in every way, and undoubtedly one of the best of Vanhée’s twelve-year career at the house.
A wardrobe for life: Hermès makes desire crystal clear A wardrobe for life: Hermès makes desire crystal clear
A wardrobe for life: Hermès makes desire crystal clear
A real high: Michael Rider delivers a Celine show to remember A real high: Michael Rider delivers a Celine show to remember
A real high: Michael Rider delivers a Celine show to remember
Everyday oddities: Loewe’s warped normality Everyday oddities: Loewe’s warped normality
Everyday oddities: Loewe’s warped normality
She feels so free: Victoria Beckham enters her roaring ‘20s She feels so free: Victoria Beckham enters her roaring ‘20s
She feels so free: Victoria Beckham enters her roaring ‘20s
The shape of feeling: At Givenchy, Sarah Burton cuts through the noise The shape of feeling: At Givenchy, Sarah Burton cuts through the noise
The shape of feeling: At Givenchy, Sarah Burton cuts through the noise
The eye has to travel: The Row’s worldly ease The eye has to travel: The Row’s worldly ease
The eye has to travel: The Row’s worldly ease
Pentaglam: Rick Owens’ elegant otherness Pentaglam: Rick Owens’ elegant otherness
Pentaglam: Rick Owens’ elegant otherness
Forever Chloé: Chemena Kamali takes stock of her house Forever Chloé: Chemena Kamali takes stock of her house
