Arts Design

WHAT TO WEAR IN WONDERLAND

by Paolo Roversi. Untitled. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

REI KAWAKUBO

What does one wear in Wonderland? One wonderland closet might be filled with Rei Kawakubo designs. While some visions of Wonderland are more ethereal and fairytale-like, there’s a radical Wonderland of possibilities in a bolder, more graphic style.

Model wears avant garde dress and wig, designed by Rei Kawakubo, at the Met Museum.

Kawakubo, the brilliant Japanese fashion innovator who founded the edgy brand Comme des Garçons in 1989, has always been about exploring new and imagined realities. In all of these years since then, she has never disappointed or bored us.

Model is wrapped in cutting edge red dress, designed by Rei Kawakubo, at Metropolitan Museum.

Her retrospective exhibition, currently on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” celebrates her career the Met’s Costume Institute.

Collection of avant garde red fashion designs by Rei Kawakubo on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

Kawakubo is the first living designer to be honored with a retrospective at the Met since 1983.

Rei Kawakubo fashion design retrospective on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

The exhibition is a wonderland unto itself. It is at once a cacophony and a chronological view of the designer’s creative journey. White walls form a circular labyrinth that serves both as a backdrop and a path. All is magically lit by 300 fluorescent tubes overhead.

Contemporary spin on traditional Japanese design, by Rei Kawakubo, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A stroll throughout yields views of 150 of Kawakubo’s designs from her all black early 1980s collections to her Fall 2017 “the future of silhouette.”

Three models blurred as they move, wearing read dresses, designed by Rei Kawakubo, at Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fantastical shapes, intriguing textures, gender bending forms, extreme color spectrums all show Kawakubo’s seemingly infinite range of imagination and aesthetic.

Move through time with the “Not Making Clothing” collection, the “Body Meets Dress—Dress Meets Body” where architecture, fashion, form, and function each take on different proportions and roles.

Cutting edge red dress design by Rei Kawakubo, featuring a whimsical giant rose pattern. On exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

Will we wear these in real life? We don’t care! We are happy in Kawakubo’s fantasy worlds.

Check out Kawakubo’s wonderland exhibition at the Met now through September 4, 2017.

Two models wearing Rei Kawakubo dark blue wonderland inspired fashion designs, at the Met Museum.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Mind/Body, Soul/Impact, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Arts/Design, and Place/Time, Daily Fix posts.

Two models wearing red, white, and black avant garde dresses, design by Rei Kawakubo, on exhibition at Metropolitan Museum.

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Model wearing wonderland inspired fashion, designed by Rei Kawakubo, on exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art.