A Look Inside Fashion’s Most Highly Anticpated Exhibition, Honoring Rei Kawakubo

Equally elusive and accomplished, Comme des Garçons’s founder and designer, Rei Kawakubo, is long overdue for a landmark exhibition. This year, the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art aims to correct that with its newest show, “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” (May 4–Sept. 4). The Japanese designer’s enigmatic creations are organized into nine distinct dichotomies—including Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, and Clothes/Not Clothes—which contextualize the “in-between” state where the unconventional pieces of Comme des Garçons exist. Circular architectural displays, inspired by Zen symbols of void and space, heighten the impact of Kawakubo’s sculptural play. If nothing else, the show proves one thing true: Nobody blurs the lines between fashion and art quite like her.