Rei Kawakubo

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.

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. His previous publications include Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (1999).