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Show Report

Show Report: Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus S/S 16

by Lou Stoppard on 27 June 2015

Lou Stoppard reports on the Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus S/S 16 show.

Lou Stoppard reports on the Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus S/S 16 show.

One wonders if Rei Kawakubo has cast her eyes over to London and the results of our recent general election. Just weeks after the Conservatives won an outright majority, and while disaffected left-wingers oppose austerity and welfare cuts, with the most committed turning to protest, brandishing punchy ‘Fuck the Tories’ banners, she showed a collection that read like an ode - or maybe even a caricature - of the British upper classes. She was toying with privilege. You could interpret that from those opening looks, jacquards of  men fox hunting in their bright red jackets or engaging in other country pursuits - topical, given that David Cameron has announced plans to repeal the UK fox hunting ban. You could also see it in the way models cast their gaze across the audience as they walked, occasionally making eye contact and surveying us with amused, haughty distain. Those exceptional wigs, bright yellow and cartoonish, looked like twisted versions of 17th and 18th century hair styles - they conjured visions of Hugh Laurie in Blackadder.

Later in the collection, pinstripes - a staple of well-off city workers - appeared, along beat up tails that could have belonged to a particularly adventurous Etonian. Other suits, each an example of perfect Comme tailoring, came with tartan edging or in checks. They conjured images of school colours and the house uniforms that dominate traditional, private and expensive UK schools. Indeed, at first glance from those preppy blues, reds and whites you thought of well-turned out boys in Ralph Lauren, but look closely and Kawakubo had ripped great slashed across the back of her jackets, or cut jagged sections into her shirting. At points the wearers looked like they could have been savaged by one of their hunting dogs. Maybe it was all a nod to the famed eccentricities of the upper classes, or perhaps even the irreverent spirit that is so inherent to being British. Indeed, her man was a punk at heart. You could see that from the way he’d furnished his waistcoat with metallic studs or from the playful polka dot shoes. Those details, alongside the rips, suggested a sense of something new, nonconformist and urgent emerging out of the status quo. Of rebellion infecting tradition. Aptly, the collection was showed in a shabby, deteriorating building on rue Meyerbeer, just above a bank. The finery that had once decorated the space was decaying. Really, the upper classes and the conservative traditions and styles Kawakubo played with and pastiched are crumbling too. There’s a new world now that’s largely more meritocratic - if even the fashion pack do still adore a plummy blue-blooded model or the child of a celebrity. Something new and dynamic is coming through out of the remnants of a traditional class-obesessed society - you saw it here first at Comme des Garcons.

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