arts & humanities

摘要

Documenting the first museum exhibition of Rei Kawakubo's work for fashion label Comme des Garcons, this catalog expands upon the collaboration between the famously reticent designer and Bolton, the curator in charge of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. Bolton highlights Kawakubo's desire to create something completely new, rather than remix the past. The artist's brief, often enigmatic statements about her work caption the images, continuing alongside a time line of her influential 40-year career. Otherwise, this substantial survey avoids biography or retrospective; Kawakubo dislikes talking about herself or her past work. Concluding with a list of titles the designer gave her collections from 1981 on, including "Holes," "Ballerina Motorbike," "Not Making Clothing," and "Body Meets Dress-Dress Meets Body," this book's spare aesthetic echoes the design of the stark white exhibition space. Where the exhibition contains only clothes on mannequins, however, here newly commissioned photographs display them on models. VERDICT Kawakubo calls her clothes "objects for the body," and this catalog allows those objects to speak to readers who understand that fashion goes beyond what you're wearing to work tomorrow.