Stephen Jones, milliner
“On my first trip to Japan, I left from Paris, rather than London. My assistant Sybille [de Saint Phalle] and I were leaving the Bain Douche the night before and people had started to recognise me and my hats and were coming up to me and saying, ‘Stephen Jones I really love your hats.’ And I was trying to leave. Sybille told me after, ‘you know, you have to just learn to say thank you and then walk away’. Anyway, between connecting flights, in Duty Free this Japanese lady came up to me and says, ‘oh, Stephen Jones, I like your hats,’ and I said, ‘thank you’ and then walked away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sybille running the one-minute mile from across the room, and she said ‘that was Rei Kawakubo’. When I arrived in Japan Rei invited me for dinner and asked ‘do you think we could work together on the collection?’ That was in 1984.
Working with her has always been extraordinary, unlike working with anybody else. I think there’s a level of trust that goes on between her and the people that she works with. It’s interesting, maybe, that she chose to name her company Comme des Garçons and not Rei Kawakubo. Every designer, to make things work, has to have an ego to drive the whole thing through because it’s so difficult and she does in a way but somehow the ego’s not for her, it’s about what she believes in. She doesn’t jump to decisions but she has a clear vision of what she likes. I think one of the most interesting things about her is that she seems to find the business side just as noble a creative venture as a new sleeve cut. She’s really into that. It’s funny coming from one of the people who you might assume didn’t have a thought about commerce. I really respect that.

接上文
I don’t think Rei was ever particularly on a mission but she did want to make people appear in a different way; to create a different aesthetic. At the very beginning Westerners thought that she was deliberately trying to defy their notions of what was beautiful or ugly. I remember for the opening of the first Gaultier show I ever worked on there was a piss-take of a Comme collection. The girl came out in black, wrapped asymmetric clothes and she hobbled out to the end of the runway to really discordant music and then a male model unwrapped her and inside she was wearing multi-coloured Gaultier-type clothes. That’s what people thought of Rei at the time, especially the French press. They hated it, absolutely hated it. But then there was this whole group of people who thought it was just the most incredible thing.
Now, if you ask any designer who their favourite designer is, or who do they most respect, they will say Rei Kawakubo. I think that’s because she is a true original. She’s stuck to her guns. She does difficult things that are beautiful. She will sometimes introduce a sense of ugliness but it will ultimately expand our notion of what is beautiful.（丑与美，值得深究） Why does she do it? I think she feels privileged to be able to do it and intense loyalty to the people around her. She cares very deeply about this thing she’s created, the weight of the company on her shoulders. It’s her responsibility and her joy.”

Tim Blanks, journalist
“In the mid-80s, when Japan’s fashion avant garde was still in its first overwhelming flush in the West, I flew to Tokyo to interview its principal players. The assignment was quite intimidating. But everyone was unflaggingly generous, gracious, charming. I was almost disappointed. Then came Comme. Already discombobulated by the cab ride to Comme’s surprisingly humble headquarters, I was led into a cold concrete bunker: two metal chairs from the Comme furniture collection and one of those gigantic floor lamps that design freaks went gaga for in the 80s. All else was darkness.
When Rei arrived, she was flanked by two translators, as if to underscore the point that English would not be spoken here. They were black-clad, of course, with a demeanour that suggested handmaidens. Once she and I took to our chairs, the ‘interview’ began. Short question, long translation, long answer, short translation. The exchange took on its own alien rhythm, like a chess match in a non sequitur dimension, with the players chillingly unmatched. As the interrogatee (for that’s how it came to seem), I dutifully perspired, squirmed, whittered on for what may have been days but were more likely seconds. Even though time stood agonisingly still, mine was eventually up. One final inchoate thought flared across the void into which I felt myself plunging. ‘What makes you laugh?’ I gasped, expecting a lengthy re-versioning in Japanese. None came. Rei looked me straight in the eye and said ‘you.’”

Zanna, photographer
“The revolution that is Rei Kawakubo completely redefined the way I dressed – firstly black, black (and a little navy). Black was never worn. Now black is everything. I have more than a 100 black skirts, 100 black jackets and coats and a plethora of blackness that is all pervading, shortly to be shown as 100 Black Skirts and Other Nuances, an installation to launch the Ragged School Emporium at London Bridge. We have green black, magenta black, violet black, violent black, blue black, and the infamous inky black-blue of Comme, a shade all of her own.
I have been asked many times why I wear black. The answer is always ‘don’t you know of Comme, of Rei, of the revolution, of the freedom, of the uniform, the design conscious, immediately identifiable and unifying force’. Let me introduce you now to the freedom, the joy of the twist of the humour. Why is your coat inside out, half finished, stitched wrong, ugly, ripped, fraying? Why is the zip visible, why is there a third sleeve? At all times Rei strikes up a conversation with the viewer and it is with admiration that I say, ‘I’ve had this one for 20 years’. Yes, old Comme, early pieces, the holy grail of ‘I was there’. This is my best expression of myself, when punk slipped into the background this one will run and run and because she knows we old punks are there with her. She nudges us with punky memorabilia to lighten the oppressive mood.
I walked into Comme on the very sad day of the death of my nephew and there hanging up was the first of the Watanabe protégé pieces. The blue-checked boiled hobo dress sang to me. At the funeral everyone asked why was I was wearing a dress made from J-Cloth. It was a light, a beacon, a small joy. It is one of the most amazing things I have ever owned. I look like a hobo bag lady in it and it cost a fortune.
I hosted the launch of Comme 2 here at the Ragged School Emporium. I wanted to host a Comme guerrilla shop here as well when they were the rage, but shortly afterwards Dover Street Market launched here in London and the random factor stopped. The Comme perfumes are the only fragrances for me. I enjoy each new vision, their modernity, their original scent is the essence of the European street, of foreign cigarettes and of incense.”

Rei Kawakubo
“The main pillar of my activity is making clothes, but this can never be the perfect and only vehicle of expression. I am always thinking of the total idea, and the context of everything. Fashion alone is so far from being the whole story. It seems that with fashion, as with art, things are getting easier in one sense but at the same time it is getting harder to be stimulated about things or excite people. Without that impetus of creation, progress is not possible. All kinds of ways of expression are spreading out all over the place, information is overflowing, and it’s harder and harder to be excited about anything. In order to be stimulated or moved in the future, we probably have to go into space and look at our world from there.
What do I think is an unyielding spirit? It would be wonderful if everyone had it in equal measure. But it’s impossible. This defiant mentality can also be called the fight against absurdity and injustice and the power (authority) that thrives around it (that is rampant). One cannot fight the battle without freedom. I think the best way to fight that battle, which equals the unyielding spirit, is in the realm of creation. That’s exactly why freedom and the spirit of defiance is the source (fountainhead) of my energy.”

END

原以为川久保玲会是一个怪阿姨，但看完这篇东西觉得她其实挺可爱的。