Review of Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Fall 2023 Men’s Fashion Show
Body Horror
By Mark Wittmer
While it may have been held in a church, the Fall 2023 show from Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons Homme Plus didn’t exactly feel holy and pure – but the thrilling and darkly atmospheric collection quickly had us forget where we were as we were absorbed into its complex and haunting fury.
Kawakubo & co. make inventive use of mutant-like tailoring constructions to question the body and explore the dark side of human nature.
An utterly eerie sound-collage soundtrack set the tone as models whose heads were crowned by crookedly constructed black wicker cages that recalled both a certain crown of thorns and Hellraiser’s Cenobites stepped slowly down the runway (the sculptural headpieces were created by artists Gary Card and Valeriane Venance). The first look featured bat-like vests that aggressively extend the shoulders of their wearers. Elsewhere, padding is used to bulbously amplify but obscure the torso, or extend outward in tube-like structures that almost suggest the growth of another limb.
While the familiar black and punky plaids appear, a new print that features almost illegibly scrawled letters suggests the frenzied journaling of a madmen – another dark and moody reference that is quickly subverted by its reappearance in bright pink. Other surface adornments on black blazers realized through smart shearing techniques include camouflage, perhaps a reference to our war-torn reality, and wood grain – an interesting reference to the natural world in a collection that feels concerned with a twisted recognition of what is human.
But this natural imagery is also obliquely picked up by the frequent uses of faux fur in the collection. It comprises entire pieces on a few looks, while playing the role of collar or trim on others. Its most interesting appearances come in pieces that have abstract swathes slashed out of them, revealing the garments layered underneath beyond the fur that lines the wound – a dramatic symbol of beast-like savagery.
Last season, CDGH+ used the idea of jester’s privilege to punkishly poke fun at the absurdity of the world, recognizing that without laughter, we can only cry or scream. Today, the laughter stopped. Echoing the wave of post-modern art that grappled with the desolation of the soul in the wake of the second world war, this collection is a sob of condemnation and a scream of confusion: condemnation of the violence and inhumanity that continues around the world when those in power already have so much, and confusion at how anybody can go on creating in the presence of such horror.
And yet – as the irrepressible imagination and skill of Kawakubo’s Comme de Garçons implies – create we must.