France Grand.
COMME DES GARCONS. Schirmer Mosel. 1998. First edition. Hardcover with the dust jacket. Out of
print. Foreword in German. Text in German. Very good in a very good dust jacket.
6.5 inches x 9 inches with 80 pages and 50 color and b/w reproductions of the work of Comme des Garcons, the label of Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo.
Rei Kawakubo was born in Tokyo in 1942 and launched the Comme des Garcons label in Japan in 1969. She made an indelible impression on Paris in the early 1980s with ripped and knotted fabrics, somber colors and asymmetrical detailing. Kawakubo has said 'What I do is not influenced by what has happened in fashion or culture. I work from obscure abstract images to create a fresh concept of beauty'.
One of fashion's great innovators, Junya Watanabe was born in Japan in 1961. In 1993, 'Junya Watanabe Comme des Garcons' was introduced in Paris, with the support of his mentor Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garcons. Watanabe's technical brilliance can be seen in the Techno Couture Collection on display. Each garment is made of hundreds of layers of polyester chintz stitched to form a complex fabric structure. Such imagination married to 'Science Non-Fiction', as he calls it, is typical of Watanabe's work.
The boards are clean with light wear. The dust jacket is tanned at the edges and spine. Few soil spots. Not price clipped. Internally, clean and bright. Unmarked. Hinges sound. Tanning to page edges. Tight binding. A very nice copy.