Comme des Garçons Homme Plus A/W 2018

Left: Model wearing a coat with padded sections, comic-strip print trousers and a padded dinosaur-style headpiece. Right: Model wearing a coat with padded sections and brick-work sleeves, comic-strip print shorts and padded dinosaur headpiece

Comme des Garçons

(Image credit: TBC)

Mood board: Read into it what you will, but the show notes for Rei Kawakubo’s A/W 2018 collection were titled ‘WHITE SHOCK: Inner Rebel’. The show opened with models wearing large dinosaur skulls rendered in fabric by the Japanese illustrator and artist Shimoda Masakatsu. The clothes featured patchwork superhero comic strips, aerial photographs of an anonymous city, photographic prints of crazy paving, pebbles and manhole covers – an eclectic mien with a textured narrative. White asymmetric front jackets were made from fabric of embossed tiled grid. Shearling cut into wide shorts and cocooning trenchcoats. Collars on shirts twisted to the right. Graphic architectural drawings of interiors were layered and printed onto blazers.

Scene setting: Kawakubo’s approach is always esoteric. Her last A/W show was staged in the grand, opulent ballroom at the Westin hotel, yet we entered the space from a narrow service entrance at the back of the building. This season the show was held inside the Théâtre du Châtelet – an opera house, located in the 1e arrondissement of Paris, which first opened in 1862. In December last year the Heritage Foundation in partnership with the City of Paris, launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for its renovation, which is under the direction of the architect Philippe Pumain. The show was set on the stage – a plywood ceiling had been lowered above and the lighting set low. Models walked to and from the edge where a tower of metal scaffolding stood, scaling the entire atrium. It represented a transformative, transfigurative mood.

Team work: All of the three styles of shoe that featured have been made in collaboration: off white trainers with Nike; two-buckle, crepe sole creepers with George Cox; an architectural rubber, closed-toe lace-up created by the Brazilian brand Melissa. Kawakubo’s S/S18 women’s show featured customised shoes by the brand and this is the first time that Melissa has developed an exclusive men’s style. ‘The surprising thing is that it's a product with no sole, and no top, as if it were a single thing.’ Edson Matsuo, Melissa’s creative director said. ‘It's a single block, which is exactly what you'd expect from Comme des Garçons.’

Left: model wearing a white jacket twisted to the right, white trousers and shoes. Right: model wearing white coat with sleeves in a geometric pattern, white shorts and shoes.

Left: model wearing blue shirt with white patchwork-style front, white skirt and shoes. Right: model wearing white shirt with architectural print and white, quilted trousers

Left: model wearing a white and black patterned shirt with cross-body buckle and white shorts. Right: model wearing long white duffel coat and padded dinosaur-style headpiece

Left: model wearing jacket with comic-strip print and camouflage trousers. Right: model wearing black and white patterned shirt with padded front sections

London based writer Dal Chodha is editor-in-chief of Archivist Addendum — a publishing project that explores the gap between fashion editorial and academe. He writes for various international titles and journals on fashion, art and culture and is a contributing editor at Wallpaper*. Chodha has been working in academic institutions for more than a decade and is Stage 1 Leader of the BA Fashion Communication and Promotion course at Central Saint Martins. In 2020 he published his first book SHOW NOTES, an original hybrid of journalism, poetry and provocation.