From founding Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market to operating in raw, lifelong, unfiltered creativity and growing herself into a business turning over more than $220 million a year, Rei didn’t have a single ounce of fashion training before she stepped into it and had to pave her own way, lets do a brief dive.
Kawakubo has always followed the beat of her own drum since the second she stepped into the design world, both commercially and creatively. She was molded at an early age by her mother, who left Kawakubo’s father when he would not allow her to work outside the home.
Rei entered the industry when she took a job at a Japanese textile factory in 1967 until she would soon move to becoming a freelance stylist. Two years later, she began making clothes under the label she would create called Comme Des Garçons and would incorporate the label in 1973 as a direct result of its popularity with Japanese consumers.
For the remainder of the decade, Kawakubo would refine her aesthetic and build her company, opening a Tokyo boutique in 1975 and adding a menswear line, Homme Comme des Garçons, in 1978. By the time of her Paris debut in 1981, Kawakubo was so famous that her followers were dubbed “the crows” in the Japanese press. The designer told The New Yorker in 2005 that she “never intended to start a revolution”; she intended only to show “what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.”
Her inspirations span numerous designers, including Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, and Helmut Lang, have all named Rei as inspiration. No one has given birth to a collection of creative offspring quite like CDG. Kawakubo launched the careers of Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara, and in 2013 added Kei Ninomiya’s Noir line to the Comme des Garçons umbrella that continues to grow.
Today, the Comme ecosystem now holds over 20 different unique lines.
Solidifying Rei as not only a pioneer in the industry, but one who did it all from the belief that true freedom comes from her creative lifestyle, a beautiful mantra.