There has long been debate around designers and what truly constitutes one.
There is something to be said for designers who are not classically trained. The flair and freshness they introduce is invigorating, continuously reshaping our perceptions of what fashion can look like and how it can feel.
Unconventional Fashion Designers Shape The Industry: Rei Kawakubo
Rei Kawakubo, founder and creator of the infamous COMME des Garçons, stands as a defining example. The label — home to a multitude of sub-brands — has left an indelible mark on the fashion world. Kawakubo, a self-proclaimed “clothes maker,” was never formally trained as a designer. Instead, she studied Eastern and Western aesthetics at Keio University in Tokyo, employing sharp intellectual sensibility when conceptualising what would become her signature anti-fashion approach. True to her Japanese roots, she founded COMME des Garçons on home soil in the late 1960s. From the outset, Kawakubo was intent on disrupting the status quo, driven by a desire to reimagine beauty itself — a conversation that has remained at the forefront of cultural discourse since beauty was first defined.
Understanding The Rules To Break Them: COMME des Garçons
This was no simple undertaking. By understanding the rules through formal education, Kawakubo knew precisely how to bend them. She confronted silhouettes that traditionally shaped the female form, facilitated a dialogue between garment and wearer, and considered movement as integral to design. These elements underpin COMME des Garçons’ enduring defiance — one that acknowledges nothing is ever static, embraces evolution, and celebrates individuality. Detached from prescribed ideas of sexuality, her work has often resisted interpretation through familiar or clichéd frameworks.
Risk, Provocation, and Fashion as Conversation
Spring/Summer 1997’s Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body — famously dubbed “Lumps and Bumps” by the press — was met with an unsavoury undertone of criticism, revealing projections rooted in rigid beauty ideals. The collection exposed how deeply conventional standards are policed. “If we don’t take risks, then who will?” Kawakubo told Vogue in response. Here, her mission is made explicit: to initiate conversation through design, to polarise so radically that space is carved out for entirely new ways of thinking. It is an embrace of the unknown, a challenge to the illusion of absolutes.
How Wabi Sabi Appears in COMME des Garçons
Central to this ethos is wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and the natural cycle of growth and decay. What began as a worldview has since evolved into an aesthetic language of its own — one that honours endurance, process, and ageing. At its core, wabi-sabi is a metaphor for life itself, reminding us not to impose preconceived notions but to observe and understand with compassion. Kawakubo carries this philosophy through every creation with an invincible bravery that refuses to conform. Asymmetrical cuts, exposed seams, frayed hems, and patchwork stitching — elements often dismissed as eyesores — are imagined as staples within the COMME des Garçons vocabulary.
Identity & The Illusion Of Consensus
Arguably one of the most collected design houses in the world, COMME des Garçons is as much an ode to the arts as it is to fashion. Kawakubo’s garments exist like sculptures, examined not only on bodies but within store displays that validate them as performative objects. Her work has been showcased in major museums globally, with archival pieces featured in numerous exhibitions. These presentations further her commentary on beauty standards and the unforgiving principles by which they are upheld.
“Beautiful Chaos”
Over time, Kawakubo has challenged not only what we wear, but how we understand ourselves. Identity is often shaped by what we perceive as consensus, skewing our sense of self in the process. Through philosophies like wabi-sabi and platforms such as Dover Street Market, a multi-brand retail space blending high fashion and streetwear, Kawakubo confronts this misinformation head-on. Described as “beautiful chaos,” the space reflects her vision perfectly: a site where design can live freely, be interpreted individually, and exist without hierarchy.
Creating Space: Interpretation & Individuality In Fashion
Ultimately, design is about more than strict adherence to rules. It is about cultivating new ways of understanding — about translating philosophy into form and acting as a vehicle for cultural ingenuity. Anyone can design; what separates the ‘real’ from the ‘fake’ is intent.
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