Rei Kawakubo's remarks following the Autumn/Winter 2025 Comme des Garçons womenswear show challenge conventional views on fashion's growth. While big fashion houses thrive financially, Kawakubo advocates for the artistry found in smaller, unique creations. Her latest collection features menswear-inspired fabrics with feminine twists, critiquing corporate culture through fashion. The intricate designs, including layered dresses and voluminous structures, defy mainstream standards and provoke thought, illustrating her commitment to fashion as a rebellious, individualistic art form rather than a mere profitable business.
Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all. There is also strong value in small. Small can be mighty.
Growth requires pleasing most of the people most of the time. It necessitates compromise. Both of those ideas are anathema to Kawakubo, to Comme des Garçons.
The initial outfits came in menswear fabrics, pinstripes and houndstooth tweeds and checks whose usually rigid forms bubbled into curved undulations that could be seen as feminine.
These dresses were big in and of themselves, of course. Some of the structures were enormous, the models' chins held involuntarily erect through the pile-up of cloth beneath them.
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