‘To me, Comme des Garçons embodies the absolute freedom to dress however you want,’ says Octavius La Rosa, founder of the Melbourne-based Dot Comme, a dealer of rare Japanese fashion. Next month, La Rosa – one of the world's most prolific collectors of Comme des Garçons – will part with 265 rare pieces from the Dot Comme collection at a landmark auction in London (15 September 2026).
Held in association with London-based auction house Kerry Taylor Auctions, the sale marks an opportunity to purchase pieces which span the breadth of Rei Kawakubo’s career – from the early years of Comme des Garçons in Tokyo, Japan (she founded the avant-garde label in 1973), to those from seminal collections like ‘Body Meets Dress – Dress Meets Body’ (S/S 1997) and ‘Broken Bride’ (A/W 2005). There will also be an offering from Junya Watanabe, a protégé of Kawakubo whose eponymous label sits under the Comme des Garçons umbrella of brands.
A look from ‘Body Meets Dress – Dress Meets Body’ (S/S 1997). The auction will feature pieces from the seminal 1990s collection
‘I took a trip to Tokyo when I was 18 and fell in love with the pieces I found at the second-hand stores,’ says La Rosa, who has operated a Dot Comme store in Melbourne for 50 years, as well as a newer location in Saint-Germain, Paris (his full 4,000-piece collection will move to the French city this autumn). ‘I took a suitcase full home, and that was the start of my love affair with the brand. The aim was always to build a collection first, business second, and nothing has changed – I still spend 70 per cent of my waking hours thinking about Comme.’
Notable pieces in the sale include a black raincoat from the 1970s (‘it is rare to find pieces from Rei Kawakubo’s early collections in Japan’), a wool ensemble from her A/W 1981 ‘Pirates’ collection (part of the first collection she showed in Paris which marked the arrival of a radical new force in fashion), and an intricate trompe l’oeil dress from A/W 2005 ‘Broken Bride’, which represents a shift towards the ‘explosive’ silhouettes which would define Comme des Garçons ouevre in the 2010s and 2020s. A handful of menswear garments will also be available in the sale.
Comme Des Garcons’ A/W 2005 ‘Broken Bride’ collection also features in the sale
Kawakubo, who is now 83 years old, is one of contemporary fashion’s most influential forces, known for both her provocative runway collections – garments often operate more like sculpture, featuring bold protrusions of fabric and manipulated silhouettes – and concept retail spaces, including Dover Street Market, which she founded with husband Adrian Joffe in 2004 (it now has outposts in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Beijing and Singapore). Her work has been featured in several exhibitions, including ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2017, and the more recent ‘Westwood Kawakubo’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in 2025.
‘What I’ve only ever been interested in is clothes that one has never seen before, that are completely new, and how and in what way they can be expressed,’ she said on the occasion of the former. ‘Is that called fashion? I don’t know the answer.’
Kerry Taylor Auctions Presents Dot Comme: The Auction takes place on 15 September 2026. The collection will be available to view on 11 September, 13 September and 14 September at Kerry Taylor Auctions, 249-253 Long Lane, London SE1 4PR.