What does “Commes Des Garçons” Even Mean?

By Alex Marootian

The words Comme Des Garçons can conjure up different meanings and ideas  depending on who you ask. To some, it just means “like boys”. To others, it is a juggernaut in the fashion industry that stretches from the ease of a CDG Play t-shirt to some of the most intricate garments being put on the runway today. But Comme Des Garçons is not just its products, it's a true innovator and a bastion of avant garde design.The “like boys” definition of Comme Des Garçons might actually be its most accurate representation, as its androgenous shapes redefined what could be put on the runway. Just as Christian Dior’s “New Look” defined post war female silhouettes, Rei Kawakubo’s first Comme des Garcons shows radically redefined what high fashion for women could be. 

During the 1970s and 80s, designers such as Alaïa, Mugler and Versace were celebrated for their bold uses of color and creating intricate feminene garments. The silhouettes at the time were skinnier, form fitting and overall stuck to traditional European codes of high fashion. Yet this was to change when Rei Kawakubo, a small designer only known in Japan, brought her label “Comme Des Garçons” to Paris. Kawakubo’s first women’s collection debuted in 1981, and it was absent of what the top designers at the time were showing. Anything that would accentuate the body and any color besides black was noticeably absent from the first Comme Des Garçons shows. Early Comme shows were uncompromising in how avant garde they were, models were stacked with layers of oversized coats, sweaters, pants and dresses. All of these pieces put together created silhouettes that disfigured and hid the model’s body, rather than accentuating it. Much of the clothes were purposefully unfinished. They were left with raw hems, open seams and even deliberately cut out holes that Kawakubo semi-sarcastically calls “Comme Des Garçons lace”. This form of rebellion lent itself to Kawakubo’s message, that high couturiers who perfectly tailor a garment with all the bells and whistles are not the end all be all of fashion.

Comme’s early success also had a distinctly feminest angle to it. Kawakubo’s aesthetic was one where women did not have to dress for the male gaze or for what a man likes. Kawakubo, being a woman succeeding in trailblazing a new take on fashion, was a shining example of an independent woman creating clothes to empower others to not have to be stereotypically “feminine”. The clothes no longer had to stick to any strict gender codes, allowing androgenous designs for men and women to become much more common. The women that bought and wore Comme des Garçons could be, as the name suggests, “like boys''. 

It is hard to capture all the ways Rei Kawakubo has influenced modern fashion. She is a true master of design and her works have inspired countless other influential designers and artists to innovate. Designers such as Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, Raf Simons and Rick Owens all have talked about drawing inspiration from different aspects of Kawakubo’s works. She rejected any preconceived notions of what fashion should be, and did it with an authenticity and clarity that helped deliver an honest portrait of Kawakubo’s personal vision. In her own words, “I never intended to start a revolution. I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.” Rei Kawakubo, 2005.