Rei Kawakubo: For and Against Fashion

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The Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garons is undoubtedly one of the worlds major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer to ever be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work exerts 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, ask what is the relationship of Kawakubos work to art, philosophy and architecture, and ultimately illustrate how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

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 *

Author Bio

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of the Reader's Guides to Deleuze and Guattari's 'What is Philosophy' (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Borges' Short Stories (Bloomsbury, 2010), and, with David Denny, co-editor of Lars von Trier's Women (Bloomsbury, 2018).