Rei Kawakubo: For and Against Fashion

by Rex Butler (Editor)

Overview

Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is undoubtedly one of the world's major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer ever to be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work has exerted an extraordinary influence over succeeding generations of designers and is a major point of reference for all those wishing to explore the place of fashion in contemporary culture.

The 14 essays in this collection, written by eminent fashion theorists from around the world, explore the relationship of Kawakubo's work to art, philosophy and architecture, and reveal how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350355293
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/14/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Deleuze and Guattari's 'What is Philosophy?' (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Stanley Cavell and the Arts (Bloomsbury, 2020) and, with David Denny, co-editor of Lars von Trier's Women (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

1. Rex Butler (editor) 'Introduction: For and against Fashion'
2. Akiko Fukai 'Couture Clash' (excerpt)
3. Barbara Vinken 'The Empire Designs Back' (excerpt)
4. Karinna Nobbs and Kat Duffy 'Rei Kawakubo as Retail Format Pioneer'
5. Llewellyn Negrin 'Rei Kawakubo: Agent Provocateur in a Hyper-Glamourised World'
6. Yuniya Kawamura 'Rei Kawakubo: Defiance Personified'
7. Masafumi Monden 'The Subversively Cute Side of Comme des Garçons: Rei Kawakubo and Romantic Transgression'
8. Tets Kimura 'Exploring the Theoretical Meaning of Rei Kawakubo: Two Waves of Arrivals of Japanese Fashion in the West and Georg Simmel's Fashion Dualism'
9. Karen de Perthuis 'Performing the Idea of Clothes: Rei Kawakubo's Fashion Manifesto'
10. Ory Bartal 'Rei Kawakubo and the Luxury of Freedom'
11. Bronwyn Clark-Coolee 'The Complexity of Kawakubo: A Radical Form of Consciousness'
12. Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas 'Between Clothing and Flesh: Kawakubo at the Met'
13. Alison Gill 'From Amidst the Betwixt and Between: The Gap between the Not-Worn and the Worn that is Opened Up by the Photographic Images in Rei Kawakubo's Exhibition Catalogue'
14. Rex Butler 'Rei Kawakubo: Fashion Degree Zero'

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“An impressively broad and highly entertaining mix of established and emerging fashion scholars tackling, with style, that most enigmatic, contrarian and complex of designers ... While some of the paradoxes of Kawakubo]s work remain, this collection enlightens and delights like the designer herself.” —Toby Slade, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

“An engaging and thought-provoking collection, exploring Rei Kawakubo's radical contribution within and beyond fashion. Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the work of one of the most challenging designers and creatives of our times.” —Flavia Loscialpo, Solent University, UK

“This array of notable voices from fashion academia offers a great companion for those who want to study the work of Rei Kawakubo, by providing theoretical tools and concepts by eminent thinkers ranging from Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan to Julia Kristeva.” —Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Ghent University, Belgium

“The connective thread that runs between [the chapters] is that Kawakubo's work reimagines, and demands that we reconsider, the very idea of fashion. It is this argument, and the breadth of scholarly perspectives included, that gives this book its value. While many of the essays are written by fashion scholars, others are by art historians, business and management scholars and curators. This multiplicity of viewpoints allows the book to speak to Kawakubo's approach to retail design, exhibition and writing about her own work. ..[It] presents the opportunity for fresh takes on the decades long career of this exceptional designer. ... Overall, the book advances an argument for Kawakubo's strength as an artist-designer who has entirely reimagined what clothes are, what fashion can be, and where creativity can take us.” —Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture

From the Publisher