'Bodies and universes. Forms of Fashion': Comme des Garçons at CDMX

Lifestyle The Franz Mayer Museum hosts the new exhibition of the Japanese firm that has challenged the conception of fashion canons.

By Luz Garcia

Fashion and culture. The intrinsic nature that exists between both values ​​is crystallized in the new exhibition that arrives at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City: 'Bodies and universes. forms of fashion'.

The exhibition, made up of 26 pieces —among garments and accessories— by Comme des Garçons will take place from November 12, 2021 to March 13, 2022. Being an exhibition that aims to outline the creative process of three iconic designers: Rei Kawakubo, creator of the firm, Junya Watanabe and Kei Ninomiya, two of the designers who, after having worked for the designer, debuted with their own lines.

'Bodies and universes. Forms of Fashion': The Comme des Garçons Exhibition at the Franz Mayer Museum

After little more than five decades of her creation in Tokyo, Japan, with Comme des Garçons, the designer Rei Kawakubo has promoted the total creative freedom with which she has exerted an imminent influence on fashion culture, managing to blur the limits of Western canons and the relationship between the body and clothing.

With this initiative, one of the most important museums in the Mexican metropolis, located at Av. Hidalgo 45, brings fashion design closer to the public from a disruptive perspective, which allows us to link ourselves to processes of innovation, creativity and technical solutions that apply designers in innovative patterns, diverse materials and technological processes for the conformation of their pieces.

Three components that have accompanied the construction of the new approach that Japanese designers presented to the Western world since the seventies. Bodies and universes. Forms of fashion, creates a space for conversation to trigger various readings of discourses applied to the body through clothing.

The exhibition will be made up of three thematic nuclei. The first, focused on Kawakubo's Autumn-Winter 2016-2017 collection, where it combines 18th-century silhouettes with punk aesthetics and spirit. The second is focused on certain stages of Junya Watanabe's career, who began working with the brand in 1987 and since 1992 has had his own line within Comme des Garçons. In the exhibition, several pieces from the Fall-Winter 2015 season can be seen, which focused on her desire to represent dimensionality through clothing. In addition, the use of the laser, which we can see in the pieces of the collection from the same summer season, but from 2016.

Finally the third core you can see the work of Kei Ninomiya, to whom Kawakubo suggested to focus on a single concept, that's how the idea of ​​choosing the black color came from, where his name as a designer came from: Noir (black in French) . Choosing this color allowed him to concentrate on technique, details and shapes.

We are ready to meet Frida Kahlo like never before.

By Yelena Crescenti

Within the pieces in this nucleus, the dress belonging to the Spring-Summer 2020 collection stands out, made up of transparent snowflakes made of acrylic joined by metal, which give the sensation of being suspended in the air and recall the shape of a chandelier. .

Different exhibitions have taken great cultural scenes that show the imprint that the firm's designs have left on the cultural scene of our days. In 1993, Kawakubo's designs were exhibited at the 'Kyoto Costume Institute'. In 2017, 140 pieces by Commes des Garçons were exhibited at the MET museum's 'Costume Institute', in the exhibition 'The Art of the In Between'.

Now, in Mexico City, we will be able to interact with 26 designs that open up the universe that exists behind the forms of garments from the so-called 'Japanese Avant-Garde' school, which deconstruct ideas of beauty and create controversy.