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Show Report

Show Report: Comme des Garçons Homme Plus A/W 15

by Lou Stoppard on 25 January 2015

Lou Stoppard reports on the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus A/W 15 show.

Lou Stoppard reports on the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus A/W 15 show.

If Rei Kawakubo demonstrated fighting spirit last season with her forceful 'anti-war' show then today, for A/W 15, a relative sense of calm had been restored. That's not to say that this was easy watching, or even optimistic or palette-cleansing, more that it focused on the individual, on personal trials and tribulations, rather than the dramas and disasters of the world as a whole. Indeed, the whole show seemed to play with the notion of clothes as personal props or allies. Sometimes suits were used to enhance the male form, with asymmetric cuts accentuating and highlighting various parts of the body, while later they served almost to mock or ridicule it, stretching across the torso with buttons about to burst or oddly mimicking flesh with nude tones.

The body was important in this collection. It's maybe for that reason that Kawakubo seemed to have selected deliberately odd or humble fabrics, to avoid us fetishising the clothes or the details. Instead the focus was on how one can adorn and decorate the body without actually using fashion. Tattoos appeared to be on Kawakubo's mind. This was expressed literally in suits with Roger Ballen imagery on the back and elaborate font mimicking lovers' branding - who is Eleanor, we can but wonder - and more subtly in the slices and slits on tailoring that suggested scarification. It also underpinned those colourful, scrawled looks, the patterns on which resembled the mess found on notebooks in stationers on which one can try out all the colourful pens for sale. Skin, this time non human, was also referenced in those animal print sleeves - slightly menacing and fetishistic, slightly foppish and awkward.

The most striking aspect of the collection was the fit, the way models appeared too large for their garment. Jackets were bursting open at the front and straining across the chest. It suggested out-growing. The most common, most cliched thing people say about tattoos is, 'you'll regret that when you're older. You won't like that design when you're 50 or so.' Many are right, many live to regret their teenage markings. It's a sign of our flighty, changeable nature as humans - our taste is slippery. The boys were literally outgrowing their clothes as they wore them - becoming too big and too developed for their choices. Maybe that's a comment on the pace of fashion; even as a collection is shown it's already becoming passé. But there's the irony, for Kawakubo is timeless. Every Comme collection will go down in history.

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