Designer Rei Kawakubo started a study in gender transformation in June with Comme des Garçons' menswear collection.
The research was inspired by a special commission: Kawakubo is indeed currently busy working on the costumes for Olga Neuwirth's opera "Orlando" for the Vienna State Opera.
The new work, scheduled to be staged in December 2019, is based on Virginia Woolf's eponymous novel and Kawakubo decided to turn this commission into a study in three acts. The menswear show in June with male models in a Woolf-like waved hairstyle wearing trousers, dresses and skirts, was indeed to be considered as Kawakubo's "Act I".
The womenswear show that took place last Saturday during Paris Fashion Week was instead to be considered as "Act II". The runway moved from Woolf's novel and, if in the menswear show we looked at male models gradually changing gender, on the womenswear runway there was a journey through the centuries, maybe partially inspired by Kawakubo's visit to the archive at the Vienna State Opera, where more than 250,000 costumes are stored.
The Elizabethan age and Baroque era inspired voluminously sumptuous Haute Couture-like costumes such as designs in luxurious fabrics and a luscious palette of pinks, blues and greens.
Brocades, tapestry and frivolous ruffles reminded the audience that there was a time when both men and women would wear ruffles and stockings, wigs and powdered hair.
History was combined in these first designs with Comme des Garçons' trademark silhouettes and conceptual ideas as proved by the floral duvet wrapped around a model or by the leggings, distorted by bumps and pads around the knee area in a kind of rugby player-meets-Michelin's Bibendum style.
Romanticism was a bright explosion of dazzling shades such as shocking pink and three-dimensional appliqued floral motifs blooming all over the designs. Then the 1900s arrived on ther runway with modern cuts, a palette revolving around black and severely tailored jackets.
Three-dimensional fringes literally bled from the label's logo emblazoned on the jackets, pointing at modern logomania, creating a new wardrobe for a genderless Orlando (will the character turn into a fashionista with a penchant for cult labels once he/she is transported to the stage?).
These designs, symbolising the transition from an arty yet sugary maximalism to a sober and powerful woman were actually wearable pieces (but there were very interesting accessories as well, such as the ankle boots covered in images that seemed made from collages of famous paintings or from contemporary painted representations of tragedies such as migration): these pieces distanced themselves from the monumental silhouettes that Kawakubo usually sends out on her runways, introducing the garments that may appear in the shops come next year.
Which ideas, colours and designs from Act I and Act II will appear on stage come December? Will Orlando wear pannier skirts, padded leggings or blazers and bermudas, or opt for sculpted bustiers matched with grand pouf skirts or will he/she be trapped in silhouettes that turn the body into a geometrical figure? We don't know yet.
What we do know, though, is that this tale of a man who lives for centuries turning into a woman could be a hit in our times in which the definitions of sex and gender are up to discussion. The fact that Neuwirth is the first woman to work for the Vienna State Opera and that Kawakubo is involved, could be the added values that attract to the time-honored opera genre an entirely new generation of people.
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