Comme des Garcons Homme Plus Finds Beauty After the Black Hole

""Love me, please love me." It's not a refrain you anticipate hearing at a Comme des Garçons show, Rei Kawakubo perhaps being one of the most unloveable designers working in fashion right now. Kawakubo is adored, but as a self-declared and much-demonstrated punk, she makes no overtures or compromises to engender universal affection with her clothes. They're difficult, obstinate, unreasonable in their undeniable genius. Kawakubo doesn't need to be loved."

"But yes, it was that 1966 Michel Polnareff track playing at high reverb, alongside other crooning love songs, that bounced around the Autumn/Winter 2026 Comme des Garçons menswear show. Kawakubo wasn't thinking about attraction, but about positivity, which has been a somewhat understandable undercurrent of this season of shows. "Let's get out of the black hole," was Kawakubo's gnomic statement that accompanied these clothes. And of course that's what the world sometimes feels like right now."

"So Kawakubo reinforced her men. The most overt expression was the rigid masks by Shin Murayama, part American football helmet, part Hannibal Lecter face cage - either to repel outside forces, or muzzle the monster within. And the clothes too had a feel of self-preservation, a trench fused into an impenetrable dress with crossing buttoned panels over the chest, contrasting with the vulnerability of sliced-out panels, chinks in their sartorial armours opening on fragile lace or bared flesh."

Rei Kawakubo presented an Autumn/Winter 2026 Comme des Garçons menswear collection that juxtaposed defensive, punk-inflected protection with exposed vulnerability. Crooning love songs, including a reverbed 1966 Michel Polnareff track, set a dissonant, optimistic tone. Shin Murayama’s rigid masks referenced American football helmets and Hannibal Lecter face cages, suggesting repulsion or internal muzzling. Garments fused trenches into impenetrable dresses with crossing buttoned chest panels, while sliced-out sections revealed fragile lace and bare flesh; hipbones and removed back sections exposed flanks. The collection emphasized self-preservation and positivity amid cultural unease, echoing similar protective motifs seen at Prada and Rick Owens.

Read at AnOther