Martha Graham's "Lamentation" is a modern dance solo with a strong poetic component. In the choreography, inspired by The Book of Lamentations, the dancer represented a universal female figure in mourning.
Graham's body movements were used to highlight that condition of grief, dramatised also by the jersey cloth that encased her body leaving her face, hands and feet exposed, and allowing her to sinuously bend and twist, while sitting on a bench.
As she stretched her body through movements based on contractions and relaxations, Graham used her costume to create architectural figures, at times angular, at others more fluid, altering and morphing her silhouette.
Graham's body distorted and contorted, because that's what an immense sorrow does to you, it gnaws at your mind and body, mentally and physically destroying you.
Graham's "Lamentation" came to mind while reading the press notes for Comme des Garçons' S/S 23 presentation. "A lamentation for the sorrow in the world today," Rei Kawakubo explained about the show that took place during Paris Fashion Week, "And a feeling of wanting to stand together."
Marking the return of Kawakubo on the Parisian runways after the Covid-19 pandemic, the presentation focused on the designer's preoccupation with the current state of the world.
In February this year, as the fashion week was taking place in Milan, Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine. The war continues and things are getting more complicated with Russia holding a fake "referendum" on the occupied territories of Ukraine, while Putin threatens to use tactical nuclear weapons.
In the meantime, in Iran they are entering into the third week of protests after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd, died after being beaten and detained by the regime's morality police for infringing hijab rules. Besides, hurricane Ian has unleashed its deadly wrath in Florida reminding us that we aren't doing enough to fight climate change, while our collective preoccupations about how to pay the rising gas and electricity bills are leaving many of us sleepless. But these are just some of the issues that are on the news nowadays – there's also the migrant crisis, unstable political situations all over the world and constant attacks on human rights.
So, rather than a celebration, Kawakubo's return to Paris was a way to take stock, look inward and ponder about the state of global affairs.
Finding clues in Kawakubo's black and white abstractions wasn't easy: figures in giant hoods in white or covered in black lace, pointed at Graham's attire in "Lamentation", but what came later on - inverted dresses that created optical illusions, monstrously voluminous biker jackets, bulbous constructions and a disquieting black hole opening in the torso of a model to maybe symbolize an emotional void - reminded us about the distortions caused by sorrow.
There were also designs evoking bedsheets and pillows, but these weren't bed dresses inspired by the quarantine blues, they were more similar to soft armours or bags filled with sand of the kind we saw protecting statues in Odesa, Ukraine.
Gradually the black faded away, making space for a pure white shade and for floral patterns. Yet the white designs, including a coat made with a cascade of ruffles, didn't offer any break from the darkness: this colour is a symbol of purity, but used to be associated with death and mourning in Japan (samurai would also wear ritual white clothes when committing seppuku).
The designs were matched with blonde wigs by Takeo Arai and cage headpieces by Gary Card and Valériane Venance that contributed to give a feeling of oppression and imprisonment.
In this sea of disquieting bodies, there were contrasts between the sinister black lace and the floral prints that also incorporated orange Tithonia flowers with a three-dimensional bright yellow core, a dichotomy that maybe pointed at hope after despair.
So, like the classical Latin authors in their consolationes, Kawakubo was maybe implying that it is useless to cry about human destiny.
Yet, through that glimpse of flowers, she was also giving us a more positive message about that feeling of "wanting to stand together", that may save us from the daily anxieties causing our relentless mental and physical destruction and reverse extinction through a vision of humanity as community.
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