Comme des Garçons
Fate and Free Will in These Digitally Dickensian Times
“...the streets and courts dart in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, are groups of people...”
—Charles Dickens,
Scoffed at by critics and diminished to a writer of platitudes, Charles Dickens is often misunderstood. A name-cum-adjective that’s been tossed around with such frequency and implemented to mean so many things at once, it has lost its meaning entirely. Peel back a few layers, though, and what’s revealed is a deep understanding of the complexities of the universal human struggle.But this isn’t Dickensian London—the Industrial Revolution ended nearly 200 years ago. The unwholesome vapour shrouding the streets and house-tops today isn’t of the manufacturing variety. It’s the stink of data harvesting, Brexit, and Trumpian Twitter. The “few gasps of such fresh air,” exists now allegorically—found only by somehow evading tech. By leaving your phone at home. Running through the streets hands-free is revolutionary and offers an element of reverie, even if just for an instant. The constraints of the civility expected in public spaces is temporarily frozen. No rules or requirements, no decorums. Is hanging out with people in real life the new punk?Who better to costume this cast than she who transcends all conventional notions of what it means to be beautiful? What Dickens did with words—layered heavily, favored realism, fate and free will, mistaken identities, wry wit and excess—Rei Kawakubo does through design. “When you put on clothes that are fighting against something, you can feel your courage grow. Clothing can set you free,” Kawakubo told in 2015. The feeling of flouting the strictures of metropolitan life—where all that’s required, maybe, are a pair of trainers and a sequined blazer.Translating Dickensian London into the 21st Century, trading the Industrial Revolution for what might be the brink of a revolution of user agency, Tim Gutt photographs Comme Des Garçons Homme, Comme des Garçons Homme Deux, and Comme des Garçons Homme Plus—apparel for an unorthodox era.
Why Do We Wear Words? Diving Deep into the Relationship Between Fashion and Writing In 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously coined the term “t-shirt” in his first novel, . At the time worn exclusively as an undergarment, the tee was named for its resemblance to the letter “T.” The written word is inextricable from the history of the t-shirt, and the t-shirt is inextricable from the history of fashion. Political t-shirts, ironic slogan t-shirts, band merch t-shirts, t-shirts inscribed with poetry, with messages of celebration and of cultural commentary. 
The Future Starts Now According To Courrèges SSENSE Visits the Design Duo Before Their Fall/Winter 2016 Runway Show The future is a target that never stops moving. 26-year-old designers Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer, on the eve of presenting their second collection for Courrèges , are in a unique position to reflect on the shifting parameters of the avant-garde. After learning their trade at the Mod'Art International School in Paris, stylist and designer Meyer and business graduate Vaillant teamed up on their brainchild Coperni Femme in 2013. 
New Icons: The Pointed Wit of Comme des Garçons With a Witchy Pair of Oxfords, Rei Kawakubo Taps into the Surreal Side of a Mexican Dance Subculture In the 1980s, Comme des Garçons ' earliest Japanese followers were nicknamed “crows.” It suited them well for various reasons. Firstly, the crooked uniformity of Rei Kawakubo’s designs encourages cultish associations. Secondly, her collections are more often than not as black as the night. And thirdly, the bird has a reputation as the foreteller of doom and destruction: a fate Kawakubo’s wrinkled, torn, stained, and patched clothes often seem to have endured on their journey to the showroom.