This secret pragmatism is perhaps the most traditionally masculine feature of Kawakubo’s designs for men. Those who wear Comme des Garçons tend to talk about how the clothes don’t feel new, even when they are — you try on a jacket with the tags still attached and have the impression that it’s been hanging in your closet for years. Kevin Hearn, a 49-year-old musician and keyboardist for the Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies and longtime Comme des Garçons client, says Kawakubo’s garments “feel musical — like each item is a different song, something that brings color and joy and inventiveness into the world.” When we spoke, Hearn was wearing his latest purchase — a black Gore-Tex slicker with a grim reaperlike hood. He described Comme des Garçons clothes as “playful” and then said, “but this raincoat isn’t funny at all. It’s elegant and well designed. It has pockets where you want there to be pockets, strings where you want there to be strings.” Kawakubo, he noted, “isn’t joking around.”
The male ardor for Comme des Garçons is, at least in part, a kind of gratitude for a gender-fluid approach to fashion design that has gone mainstream in recent years but was practiced by Kawakubo, virtually alone, for decades. She shrank suit jackets to Chanel topper proportions, made handsome (no other word for it) skirts out of gabardine and tacked schoolgirl collars on otherwise office-ready white button-downs. She gave men a way of opting out of society while still remaining in it. For nearly a century, there had been little to no innovation in men’s wear — a steady, conservative beat of sensible, timeless clothing. Then suddenly, Kawakubo appeared like a sorceress, materializing a new and more permissive way of appearing in the world that changed not only fashion but, on a small scale, maleness itself. Now, 40 years after she began designing men’s wear, her philosophical heirs — Thom Browne, Raf Simons, Craig Green, to name a few — are everywhere. This, finally, is their time.
“WHAT DID YOUR father dress like?” I asked Kawakubo about halfway through our interview. Joffe translated, and Kawakubo spoke to him in Japanese for what felt like 20 to 30 seconds. “She doesn’t understand the question,” Joffe said. He laughed, Kawakubo did not, and it was tacitly understood that this was tantamount to a refusal.
The conversation continued a bit awkwardly. Kawakubo expressed annoyance that her spring 2017 collection (Naked King) hadn’t gotten the credit it deserved for popularizing transparent garments for men — a trend seen on the runways (Calvin Klein, Balenciaga, Off-White) for seasons after. She explained that incorporating unexpected materials, like the ghostly knit PVC she employed in that collection, is the challenge and joy of designing for men. “The one thing she doesn’t like is camping clothing — you know, walking-outdoors fashion?” Joffe interjected. “Athleisure, you mean?” I asked. He nodded and scribbled the word down in English on a scrap of paper for Kawakubo to read. “You know this word?” he asked. She shook her head in disdain. “The most boring fashion for her is this,” he said. “I have looked to see if there is anything interesting here and I have not found it,” Kawakubo added.
