The season was full of artist collaborations, but Kawakubo's appropriation of nine artists seemed to reflect the jumpy attention spans of modern life. From the contemplative gentility of Mignon's floral still lifes and the subtle ink strokes of 16th century Japanese monk Sessun Shukei, we switched to E-Boy's pixel landscapes, the skate culture art of Stefan Marx, and the cartoonish faces of Serge Vollin staring back at you like colorful emojis. Even the 16th century surreal fruit-and-veg portraiture of Giuseppe Arcimboldo had a kitschy quality to it. Kawakubo was visually baiting us with her "multi-dimensional graffiti" — the cryptic phrase proffered up this season — "It's as if the graffiti on the wall has come alive," Adrian Joffe added. Last year, Kawakubo's visionary acts of fashion rebellion were consecrated by the Metropolitan Museum in New York with Comme des Garçons:[ Art of the In-Between. If the exhibition at the Met allowed Kawakubo to parse her work through fundamental themes, this collection felt like a giddy respite to that process of heavy curation, with Kawakubo extracting that thrill of seeing Comme for the first time.
“However, there are those who buy – and wear – these pieces; those for whom restriction of physical movement is merely an aesthetic necessity, who not only keep their prized garments locked away in an archive but use them to enlighten their day-to-day life. They are, brilliantly, the people who power an industry built on retail – and one of those women is Michelle Elie.” Article about Michelle Elie Collecting Comme des Garcons. Museum Angewandt Kunst -April 3 2020- January 3 2021 Ausstellung
