I started with wanting to think about witches, about strong women who have special powers - who are often misunderstood. Then I found some beautiful blue fabric, so I made Blue Witches. My creative process is always like that. Organic, text, theme, subtext, each day evolving and trying to make strong, beautiful clothes. It's that simple.

Rei Kawakubo

Categorized in : Beautiful Simple Strong Women

For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.

Rei Kawakubo

beautiful

If I do something I think is new, it will be misunderstood, but if people like it, I will be disappointed because I haven't pushed them enough. The more people hate it, maybe the newer it is. Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change. The place I am always looking for-because in order to keep the business I need to make a little compromise between my values and customers' values-is the place where I make something that could almost-but not quite-be understood by everyone.

Rei Kawakubo

hate order thinking

Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.

Rei Kawakubo

progress creation

Fashion is something that you can attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction, the meaning of it is born.

Rei Kawakubo

interaction born fashion

Comme des Garcons is a gift to oneself, not something to appeal or to attract the opposite sex

Rei Kawakubo

appeals opposites sex

I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks.

Rei Kawakubo

clothes husband thinking

My energy comes from freedom and a rebellious spirit.

Rei Kawakubo

rebellious energy spirit

The more people that are afraid when they see new creation, the happier I am.

Rei Kawakubo

creation people

Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.

Rei Kawakubo

change fundamentals people

For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit - the hungry mind - is what gets you going forward.

Rei Kawakubo

japan spirit mind

I don't feel too excited about fashion today People just want cheap fast clothes and are happy to look like everyone else

Rei Kawakubo

clothes fashion people

What I want to express is a feeling-various emotions that I am experiencing at the time-whether it is anger or hope or anything else, and from different angles. I construct a collection and it takes concrete form. That's probably what appears conceptual to people because it never starts out with any specific historical or geographical reference. My point of departure is always abstract and multileveled.

Rei Kawakubo

fashion feelings people

Fashion is something you attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction the meaning of it is born. Without the wearing of it, it has no meaning, unlike a piece of art. It is fashion because people want to buy it now, because they want to wear it now, today. Fashion is only the right now.

Rei Kawakubo

fashion people art

You can tell if it's a good collection if people are afraid of it. In ten years, everyone will love it.

Rei Kawakubo

collections people years

What you wear can largely govern your feelings and your emotions, and how you look influences the way people regard you. So fashion plays an important role on both the practical level and the aesthetic level of activity.

Rei Kawakubo

fashion play people

Beauty is whatever anyone thinks is beautiful.

Rei Kawakubo

beautiful thinking

The theme of the collection this time is MONSTER. It's not about the typical Monster you find in sci-fi and video games. The expression of the Monsters I have made has a much deeper meaning. The craziness of humanity, the fear we all have, the feeling of going beyond common sense, the absence of ordinariness, expressed by something extremely big, by something that could be ugly or beautiful. In other words, I wanted to question the established standards of beauty.

Rei Kawakubo

expression games beautiful

If you have total freedom to design, you won't get anything interesting. So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It's the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through. So it's self-given, but that's the only way, I think, to make a strong, good new creation.

Rei Kawakubo

pain strong struggle

Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them.

Rei Kawakubo

fashion different art

I work in three shades of black.

Rei Kawakubo

black fashion three