In person, the designer is as difficult to pin down as her clothes. That she dislikes the face-to-face interview process is clear. The first time we met was more than ten years ago at her Paris headquarters, Place Vendôme. When I questioned her on the thinking behind her most recent offering, she sat down, drew a picture of a circle on a piece of paper, and promptly disappeared. This was all the more remarkable given that the season in question was the by now famous Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body 1997 collection（吧内有帖子哦）, one of her personal favourites, featuring padded humps at shoulders and hips that were far from conventionally easy on the eye.
Since that time, we have met on many occasions. The designer sits patiently and always politely and answers all questions through any number of highly protective interpreters. But her response is, for the most part, deliberately, and at times prohibitively, opaque. Her company is called Comme des Garçons（我一直不知道为何取这名——像男孩？） – as opposed to Rei Kawakubo – because as she has told me, she “just likes the way it sounds”. The colour gold reminds her of "Dubai, of the Vatican and of teapots" but she would rather not be taped making such observations, in fact, she would rather not be taped at all. Each season she issues a one- or two-word statement of intent – this season’s is "adult delinquent". No further explanation is offered, nor required, as far as she and her team are concerned.
There may be many reasons why Kawakubo resists verbal communication（我就没见过她谢幕） – one might attribute it to a deep mistrust of members the press who, let’s face it, were plain antipathetic when she started out or, simply to the fact that the designer may well just be shy. No matter because, in the end, all of Kawakubo’s energy goes into the further enhancement of the Comme brand from in-store display and design to fragrance and, over and above anything else, into clothes. This, along with the following deeply respectful responses from people who have been inspired, moved and even laughed at by Kawakubo, speaks volumes about the designer.

Alice Rawsthorn, journalist
“I came across Comme des Garçons in the early 1980s, a season or two after Rei Kawakubo first showed in Paris. At the time I was a trainee journalist with no money and still dressed by customising jumble sale bargains. But as soon as I could afford to, I started buying a piece from Comme each season. Fashion was much more politicised then, because feminism was so important. What you wore said so much about your own identity, and how you wanted to represent your gender. Comme was the perfect solution. Swathing yourself in those black folds felt super chic, super uncompromising, super radical and super feminist – like waving a very elegant two-fingered salute at the establishment.
Together with Yohji Yamamoto, the Sony Walkman, Muji and manga, it was also part of a fascination with all things Japanese that enthralled us for much of the 1980s. It wasn’t until much later that I realised quite how amazing it was for a woman – Rei – to have founded and run her own business in such a misogynistic corporate culture as Japan. And it took even longer to appreciate how few other companies were as brilliantly branded as Comme. Everything it does is fantastic. The Cindy Sherman ads. The Claude Cahun posters. The flagship store on Omotesando, and Cornish boatyard-built entrance to West 22nd Street in New York. The Shirt campaigns. Dover Street Market. And where else would I buy a wallet?”

Lady Amanda Harlech （老佛爷背后的女人哦）
“Words miss, skew and slip past Rei – they only describe a surface. I think she understands the crosscurrents and perilous waters of dressing as a woman. She is a poet. We recognise the lyric narrative in the cloth, which she overlays or twists into a new response to who we are today. The colour sense, the textural subtlety, the form, it all adds up. Rei transformed the nature of dressing for me and remains an inspirational light in my eye. When I am lucky enough to see one of her shows I am moved and stilled, it’s almost religious, like receiving a blessing.”

Björk, musician
"I remember going to the London Comme des Garçons store with Nellee Hooper in about 1992. It was definitely the most sacred store I’d been in yet. I was tiptoeing around and found it uncomfortable to speak to the personnel. They might catch the greedy look in my eye. In person, Rei reminded me of my grandmother – a much younger, Japanese version. She was confident, calm, not falling for any pressure to take part in small talk or other social behaviour, not moving out of her integrity zone for others. I think she has definitely proved that it is possible to be that brave, that it is possible to keep one’s integrity."

Ann Demeulemeester, designer（暗黑女王哦，老一辈日本设计师对安特卫普一流也颇有影响）
"I respect Rei. The less words, the better. That’s how Rei herself likes it best. She just gives her talent and vision to the world. The first time I discovered Comme des Garçons was back in the beginning of the 80s. Seeing her work gave me the impression that everything was possible, that it was the beginning of the future of fashion. It was so exciting. Today 2009 is not what I thought it would be back then. But some people, like Rei, continue what they started with faith and believe in the strength of an individual voice. In the end it’s the only way we can honestly and truly give."

Daphne Guinness（一看这姓就不得了）, collector of haute couture
"I first came across Comme des Garçons in 1989 when I think they were based in Greene Street, SoHo. It was at the time when SoHo was full of art galleries and I remember Comme being very different from anything else that was around at the time. The whole company reflects Rei’s aesthetic of individuality and it feels like a family. It is wonderful to see that companies like that exist; a business that doesn’t feel corporate, Comme is a model of what art combined with clothing is all about.”

Edward Enninful, fashion editor
"I was about 16 when I first came across Comme des Garçons. Nick Knight, Simon Foxton, Judy Blame, that whole gang, they introduced me to Comme. I didn’t meet Rei until 1996. I’d always really admired her work so I was intimidated on the one hand but I also thought she was very funny. Everyone thinks she’s really serious. But she’s so funny, so dry. We always laugh. She’s also, of course, very creative.
She proved that you could be an outsider and still be influential, that you could follow your instincts and still make a difference. You didn’t have to be the norm. You didn’t have to conform. To me, Rei’s totally punk rock. She’s on her own track. She does her own thing and people follow. You can see her influence in the work of numerous designers. In the 80s she changed the way that people looked at black. People wear black – all the different shades of it – because of Rei. And a lot of designers today wouldn’t exist had it not been for her pioneering vision. I think that now she’s in the pantheon of the gods. What can you say? There are designers and there’s Rei Kawakubo.”

Nick Knight, photographer
“I’ve been aware of Comme des Garçons since about 1985. That Japanese moment, that huge new wave of Japanese design that came through in the mid-80s, with Yohji and Comme, hit at a point with me and fashion photography when that was exactly what I wanted to see. I didn’t want to do photography that looked like the stuff that Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton or Bruce Weber had been doing, or any of my contemporaries at the time were doing. It was all very sexual and I didn’t want to do that kind of photography. I wanted to do something that was about presenting women in a different way. And what I thought about both Rei and Yohji was that they had visions of women that weren’t based on sexuality; they were about women’s intellect and fantasy as opposed to their sexuality. Previously fashion had been all about shoulder pads and about power dressing, the whole vampy thing.
There was Saint Laurent and the designers of the early 80s – Gianni Versace, Donna Karan – and photography was in keeping with that. It was either Peter Lindbergh’s Italian neorealism or it was Weber’s 1930s-inspired health photography or it was Arthur Elgort’s dancing stuff, those were the major influences around and they were pretty much rooted in the fashion that had happened over the last 15 years. When Comme and Yohji came along there wasn’t, in my opinion, a photographic language to interpret what they did and I was very interested in that. More than 20 years later, I still love getting Rei’s clothes in editorials and, of course, you do quite often. They have that weird mixture of Japanese minimalism and nihilism and Walt Disney. It’s a very strange mixture and one that I find fascinating.”

Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, creative consultant
“I was one of the founding owners of the original Details magazine and we were among the early supporters of Comme des Garçons, but I didn’t know Rei then. That was from 1982 to 1989. For us, she was like the ultimate visionary. We were about Downtown life, which was a world of artistically minded people living together. It wasn’t a world based on economics. Comme was always expensive and I’m not saying I had much of it. I would buy it on sale.
Rei was the first designer to symbolise a change in attitude. She’s a non-conformist. Just at the moment you think she’s made the rule, she breaks the rule. She’s the most consistently unpredictable person in our business. I think her influence is so wide that I would even go so far as to say that if she hadn’t been there then Apple wouldn’t exist. Even though it doesn’t touch on her world, it’s a brand that has always spoken to people who saw her as a guru, which catered to the more media- and creatively orientated. Rei connected all of those people internationally.
I started working with Comme about 12 years ago. In person, I’d describe Rei as really funny: look at what she designs. She’s totally ironic, a voyeur, and someone who loves animals. She has a morality. She has a great sense of dignity. She has a great sense of humour. She has a great sense of caring in her own way. I wear the clothes and I’ve always found there to be something very classic about what she does. The taste level is amazing. It’s so pure. The spirit, the intelligence and the way it all comes together. It’s just perfectly pitched. I think Rei cares about what her customers think.
She certainly isn’t thinking about reviews when she’s working, although she may read some. She speaks to her customers. She’s a businesswoman as well as a designer. She goes into her shops all the time. She thinks about how clothes are displayed; how they’re going to be worn; about the environment in which you shop, she thinks about what else you might want when you’re there. She cares about the real things, the things that matter. A lot of designers never go into their own stores; they don’t have a relationship with their customer. She’s the one folding the clothes before they open up a new store. She’s in there.”