Comme des Garçons

 

Comme des Garçons, French for “like boys”, is a Japanese fashion label headed by Rei Kawakubo, who is also its sole owner.

Comme des Garçons has a dozen boutiques and approximately 200 vendors around the world, with flagship stores in Aoyama, Tokyo‘s high fashion district, as well as Place Vendôme in Paris. Each year, the company grosses in the neighborhood of $150 million.

The label was started in Tokyo by Rei Kawakubo in 1969 and established as a company in Japan in 1973. Comme des Garçons became successful in Japan throughout the 1970s and a men’s line was added in 1978. 1981 saw Comme des Garçons’s debut show in Paris which created a storm of controversy for its predominate use of black and distressed fabrics. Throughout the 1980s, Comme des Garçons’s clothes were often monochromatic, asymmetrical and draped over the body. Tears, holes and frayed edges were also a feature. Comme des Garçons (along with Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake ) attacked established notions that clothing had to be sexy, colourful and beautiful. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s Comme Des Garçons collections incorporated more colour and fabrics.

After the Paris debut, Comme des Garçons had an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in the mid 1980s consisting of photographs taken by Peter Lindbergh. 2006 saw an exhibition in Shibuya, Tokyo of Comme Des Garçons advertising and graphic design.

Comme des Garçons collections are designed in the Comme des Garçons studio in Aoyama, Tokyo and are made in Japan, France and Turkey.

The 1997 spring/summer collection, often referred to the ‘lumps and bumps’ collection, was a much talked about show in Paris that season. It featured predominately tight tops and skirts that were swollen by goosedown-filled lumps which distorted the body shape. This led to a collaboration, also in 1997, between Rei Kawakubo and New York-based choreographer Merce Cunningham called ‘Scenario’.

The 2006 autumn/winter collection dealt with the concept of the ‘persona’, the different ways we present ourselves to the world. Fusing tailored menswear with more feminine elements such as corsets and flower printed dress fabrics, ‘Persona’ was another collection that combined the feminine with the masculine by Comme des Garçons.

Junya Watanabe and, as of recently, Tao Kurihara have started their own sub-labels under the Comme des Garçons name to much acclaim. Both were also involved in designing for the casual women’s knitwear line ‘Comme Des Garçons Tricot’.

Comme des Garçons have collaborated with various other labels over the years including Vivienne Westwood, Fred Perry, Levi’s and Speedo.

Source: Wikipedia

Coco Chanel – Fashion Icon

Source: Wikipedia

Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (August 19, 1883 – January 10, 1971)^[1] was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure in the history of 20th-century fashion. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century.^[2]

She was born the second illegitimate daughter of traveling salesman Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle in the small city of Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. There was a mis-spelling on her birth certificate that was recorded her surname as ‘Chasnel’, making the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence. Coco was born in a poorhouse. Her birth was recorded the following day. Two employees of the hospice went to city hall and declared the child of feminine gender. The hospice employees were illiterate so when the mayor François Poitu wrote down the birth, no one knew how to spell Chanel so the mayor improvised and recorded it with an “s”, making it Chasnel. Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882-1913) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old, Chanel’s mother died; her father left the family a short time later. The young Chanel spent seven years in the orphanage of the Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital of Moulins, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate. When Coco turned eighteen, she left the orphanage, and took up work for a local tailor.It was at the tailor shop where she met and soon began an affair with the English playboy Étienne Balsan. While living with Balsan, Coco began designing hats as a hobby. The hats immediately caught the attention of the female Parisian élite, and provided Coco with a path toward earning financial independence for herself. With the aid of Balsan and another rich lover Arthur “Boy” Capel (d. 21 December 1919 in a motor accident), Coco was able to acquire the property and financial backing to open her own millinery shop, in 1909, called ‘Chanel Modes’, at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. Her hats were worn by celebrated French actresses, which helped to establish her reputation. Chanel introduced in 1913 women’s sportswear at her new boutique in Deauville, France, in the Rue Gounaut-Biron; Marthe, Countess de Gounaut-Biron, (daughter of American diplomat John George Alexander Leishman) was Chanel’s first aristocratic client.

Later in life, Coco Chanel concocted an elaborate false history for her humble beginnings. She would steadfastly claim that when her mother died, her father sailed for America and she was sent to live with two cold-hearted spinster aunts. She even claimed to have been born in 1893 as opposed to 1883, and that her mother had died when Coco was 6, instead of twelve. She never married. All this was done in order to diminish the stigma that poverty and orphanhood bestowed upon unfortunates in nineteenth century France.

Twiggy – Fashion Icon

Source: Wikipedia

Lesley Hornby (popularly known as Twiggy, born 19 September 1949) is an English supermodel, actress, and singer, now also known by her married name of Twiggy Lawson. A 1960s pop icon known for her large eyes, long eyelashes, and thin build, she is regarded as one of the most famous models of all time. Twiggy went on to star in movies, and spent four years as a judge on the reality show America’s Next Top Model.