Between worlds of taste and recognition

Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons [Photo/Courtesy of Comme des Garçons]

Miuccia Prada is candid about Kawakubo's economically discreet impact on global fashion culture. "I always say 'Thank God Rei doesn't want to be commercial'," Prada said in a 2016 interview with 10 Magazine. "Otherwise, we would all be dead."

It's precisely Kawakubo's market-insensitive approach that defines her singularity. "If, as Andy Warhol proposed, 'Business art is the step after art,' Rei is its fashion manifestation," remarked Bolton. "It's within this elastic zone between fashion and commerce that Rei's 'art of the in-between' occupies and most powerfully expresses itself."

The closest Kawakubo ever came to outright commerciality was collaborating with Swedish retail giant H&M in 2008. "I have always been interested, as an independent businesswoman, in the balance between creation, which is the core value of Comme des Garçons, and good business, which comes a close second," Kawakubo told this reporter that year. "Comme des Garçons with H&M is the epitome of this challenge."

Margareta van den Bosch, creative director at H&M (which is sponsoring the exhibition, along with Apple, Farfetch and Valentino) said that Kawakubo had been atop their wishlist for design collaborators from the start. "She's always been at the forefront, experimenting with garments, never following any rules. We have tremendous respect for Kawakubo's fashion philosophy, which questions the entire fashion world's ingrained patterns."