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Discover›Design & architecture
Contents
Rei Kawakubo
Fashion designer

Rei Kawakubo

Famoose for

Challenging conventional clothing through Comme des Garçons.

Tokyo boutique · Art of the In-Between

Born
11 October 1942
Birthplace
Tokyo

More people

Zaha HadidDesigning buildings with sweeping, fluid forms.Coco ChanelBuilding Chanel and popularising a simpler style of women’s dress.Christian DiorIntroducing the New Look that reshaped postwar fashion.

Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo is a Japanese fashion designer whose sculptural and often deconstructed garments question familiar ideas of dress.

Early life

Keio University

Studied aesthetics rather than training formally in fashion.

First jobs

Worked in textile advertising before becoming a stylist.

Career

  1. 1969

    Comme des Garçons

    Began making clothes under the label.

  2. 1973

    Company

    Incorporated the business.

  3. 1981

    Paris

    Began presenting collections in Paris.

Selected work

Tokyo boutique

Opened an early Comme des Garçons shop.

Art of the In-Between

Her work received a Metropolitan Museum exhibition.

Beyond work

Creative approach

Has described a desire to move beyond inherited fashion conventions.

Sources & photo creditBiography and career ↗Biographical data and references ↗

Original photograph. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.

Photo: Annie Leibovitz / Vogue, May 2017. Copyrighted image; source credit retained · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.