Comme des Garçons Fall-Winter 2024/2025

She could be a Herero queen whose Victorian attire bespeaks the outbursts of an enraged tribe. Or perhaps the African goddaughter of a Marie Antoinette or a Countess de Castiglione stranded amidst a stormy ocean. The skirts are rising waves, these black torrents pouring out on either side of the shoulders, giving the silhouettes that advance, retreat, stamp their feet, the monumental air of swelling anger. Their names are Yuliya, Athiens, Charlotte, and in front of an audience of stunned guests, caught up in these apparitions, they stand out in the half-light like divinities whose movement is amplified by jagged spirals and black polyester craters.

You don't know where these dresses begin and end, they're almost sonorous finery, and what springs forth through them is the stroke of the chisel, the one that transforms these Age of Enlightenment baskets into survivalist ready-makes and gives these neo-punk meninas the trappings of a high-voltage couture apocalypse. Here and there, hundreds of upturned cones and balloons seem to deflate and inflate as they walk, giving them an unreal presence yet so materially anchored in a history whose secrets the Comme des Garçons designer has mastered. Impressive. A story of volumes, deconstruction, of surpassing oneself in matter.  The hair eccentricities of the 18th century are enhanced by Takeo Arai's black and fiery red wigs. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata resonates with the torments of passion. When the music stops, everything falls silent; backstage; everything is almost wrapped up; everything disappears. You think you've been dreaming with your eyes open. And Rei Kawakubo's message appears on a screen, like a rebus: “This collection is about my present state of mind. I have anger against everything in the world, especially against myself.”