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Wearable Art: What You Need To Know About Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons at The Met

Bucket List confession: It’s been a dream of mine for quite sometime to attend the Costume Institute’s Met Gala. Colloquially and affectionately referred to as “fashion’s biggest night out,” the Costume Institute’s Met Gala is PEAK celebration of iconic style.

And as we all know by now, this year’s Met Gala was a spectacular showcase of quasi-wearable, avant-garde fashion, honoring the Costume Institute’s latest exhibition on Rei Kawakubo and her label Comme des Garçons.

And unlike past Met Gala events this hullabaloo was loaded with an incredible mix of celebrities smoking in a bathroom and meme-inducing sculptural looks that are still keeping the internet in a frenzy.

https://twitter.com/MarcSnetiker/status/859172626362585088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allure.com%2Fstory%2Fbest-met-gala-memes-2017

But if you still haven’t visited the 2017 Costume Institute exhibition on Rei Kawakubo and her label Comme des Garçons you are missing out on a treat.

Here are three things you need to know about this incredible showcase.

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Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photo by Jemal

#1 This showcase makes history 

Aptly named Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, the exhibition highlights the reclusive designer’s wide array of left-of-center, hyper-modern, sculptural constructions — retracing almost 40 years of clothing. And this is first exhibition since 1983 Yves Saint Laurent show that celebrates a living artist.

#2 The show is weird and wonderful

Fashion Unfiltered founder and CDG collector Katherine Zarrella tells Forbes: “I thought the setup was brilliant—very CDG in the way it made no suggestions. Instead, it invites the viewer to come inside and experience the garments for herself.”

5REI1-superJumboAgaton Strom for The New York Times

#3 The exhibition ONLY features showstoppers 
Visitors, prepare yourselves to enjoy an entirely escapist experience. The exhibition singles out some of the Japanese label’s more daring creations — “a staggering panoply quasi-wearable three-dimensional forms,” as Roberta Smith describes.

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Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photo by Jemal

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Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photo by Jemal

Selections from CDG’s Body Meets Dress 1997 collection pays homage to the ‘lumps and bumps’ of a human body  — even the ones that might sprout from the wrong places. Featuring dresses, skirts and jackets, made with vibrant, stretch gingham checks, stuffed with large goose-down-filled protuberances. It’s oddly beautiful.

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Agaton Strom for The New York Times

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