UNLIMITED REI KAWAKUBO

I have only done what I found to be beautiful at the time.
And there was a big backlash against this.
Almost for the first time, I learned that beautiful things to me are not necessarily beautiful to everyone else, but they could well be something very scary.
That, as a result, inflamed me to go on and stimulated my following creations.
I would never be content making garments everyone else finds beautiful.
Instead, I became defiant asking people why they don't understand this.

Something may be annoying you at the moment, or you may think something is wrong with the world.
These feelings could become an ingredient for my creation.
It means that even things-yet-to-have-form could possibly be designed.
You feel something; a variety of factors influences each other; overlap each other or are created through a series of accidents.
It is something that comes about from the sequence.
It could also be anger, a motivation for new ideas, or a desire to make strangly shaped clothes.

Some patterners spend a couple of weeks in agony.
That's suffering.
If we just followed design drawings, it would be easy-peasy for everyone here.
At the start, I am not exactly certain what I am thinking my self.
It is guess work with us.
Patterners, at this stage, are at liberty to agonize over the theme I have given them.
You can't create anything new any other way.
We may, as a result, see what we have never seen before.

Just defining new lines and making paper pattenrs is not design.
Although designing a silhoutte used to be enough, design will be more than that from now on.

It starts as an invisible concept without a shape.
The concept could be anger, evergy or an inspiration to make something strangely shaped.
I don't explain any more that that to my staff.
We all start from there.
We have no time orthought to spare.
Nothing comes out until the last minute.
If you want to make something new, your long experience will hinder your new approach and make the situation difficult.
"Excitement" and "Pleasure" don't describe enough how we fell.

Suppose everyone likes my collection and says "The show was great" and "The clothes were beautiful," then I become very uneasy.
I would hate myself for having made something so easy to understand.

There is always a sence of crises.
The fear of not knowing how much longer I will be able to continue to create.

If we made clothes that are easily understood and likely to sell well, there would be no place for COMME des GARCONS.

Traditional values have existed for a long time.
I wasn't aware of this my self , but I bounced whatever I found interesting and beautiful off Paris.
But that was not something they wanted to recognise there.
I was cumbersome to those traditionalists hoping to hold on to their values.
After a while, that which was hated became recognised as being something beatiful.
Many young people started working with and sharing the values I appreciate.
I may have achieved something, however small.
One of the aims for my work is to be influential in this way.
I don't know If I can do that though.
I wish I could find even newer values.
I would very much like to find them.


REI KAWAKUBO
(All quotes from Unlimited COMME DES GARCONS)