No-one can stimulate, delight and challenge an audience like Rei Kawakubo. This season saw her hold the audience in reverie at her “white drama” – was it a series of subversive brides or a catalogue of life’s ecclesiastical moments? Who knows? There can be no doubt, however, at the mastery of fabric and brilliant construction of an extraordinary collection. Oversized white satin wedding dresses oozed couture finesse, bulging wigs became balloons of white rubber, tailored frock coats were transformed with giant multiplying white flowers, voluminous sleeves reached for the floor and pleated skirts carried foam-like crinoline hoops. Toward the finale, there was something almost funereal or mummified about the girls, who came out completely cocooned from head to ankle, their upper bodies smothered in roses. Another brave, fiercely conceptual and uncompromising collection from fashion’s undisputed queen of the avant-garde.
Text: Caroline Newell
Photography: Mitchell Sams
