Rei Kawakubo: For and Against Fashion: Rex Butler: Bloomsbury Visual Arts

Rei Kawakubo

For and Against Fashion

Rei Kawakubo

For and Against Fashion

Description

The Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is undoubtedly one of the world's 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 Kawakubo's work to art, philosophy and architecture, and ultimately illustrate how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

List of Illustrations

1. Rex Butler (editor) 'Introduction: For and against Fashion'
2. Akiko Fukai 'Couture Clash' (excerpt)
3. Barbara Vinken 'The Empire Designs Back' (excerpt)
4. Karinna Nobbs and Kat Duffy 'Rei Kawakubo as Retail Format Pioneer'
5. Llewellyn Negrin 'Rei Kawakubo: Agent Provocateur in a Hyper-Glamourised World'
6. Yuniya Kawamura 'Rei Kawakubo: Defiance Personified'
7. Masafumi Monden 'The Subversively Cute Side of Comme des Garçons: Rei Kawakubo and Romantic Transgression'
8. Tets Kimura 'Exploring the Theoretical Meaning of Rei Kawakubo: Two Waves of Arrivals of Japanese Fashion in the West and Georg Simmel's Fashion Dualism'
9. Karen de Perthuis 'Performing the Idea of Clothes: Rei Kawakubo's Fashion Manifesto'
10. Ory Bartal 'Rei Kawakubo and the Luxury of Freedom'
11. Bronwyn Clark-Coolee 'The Complexity of Kawakubo: A Radical Form of Consciousness'
12. Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas 'Between Clothing and Flesh: Kawakubo at the Met'
13. Alison Gill 'From Amidst the Betwixt and Between: The Gap between the Not-Worn and the Worn that is Opened Up by the Photographic Images in Rei Kawakubo's Exhibition Catalogue'
14. Rex Butler 'Rei Kawakubo: Fashion Degree Zero'

Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published	Jul 25 2024
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	240
ISBN	9781350355293
Imprint	Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Illustrations	16 colour and 44 bw illus
Dimensions	9 x 6 inches
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

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