Rei Kawakubo: Let's Get Out of the Black Hole

 

There is irony in the fact that it was precisely the legendary Rei Kawakubo, a monumental figure in contemporary haute couture, who issued the provocative slogan: "let's get out of the black hole." Because the same Kawakubo has spent entire decades invoking the quantum and philosophical mysteries of black holes throughout her career and through her daring haute couture house Comme des Garçons, turning darkness into her creative alphabet.

What black hole was Kawakubo really referring to? Perhaps she wasn't talking about the cosmic magic or the astrophysical mystery that surrounds these phenomena of the universe, those gravitational wells where time itself twists until it disappears. Kawakubo was surely referring, quite literally, to the existential abyss into which the world has fallen in recent years: that void of meaning and collective hopelessness. Something like the sensation of being swallowed by invisible forces that overwhelm us, reducing us to cosmic dust.

Or perhaps, and this would be even more disturbing, more terrifying, Kawakubo is convinced that our universe truly exists inside a black hole and will inevitably be swallowed and disappear one day, and her fashion is nothing more than the visual testimony of that apocalyptic revelation. A premonition dressed in textiles and seams.

The collection presented for Fall/Winter by Comme des Garçons is titled "Black Hole," and it's obvious that the predominant color is Kawakubo's eternal ally: absolute black, the black that devours light without mercy, the black that admits no concessions. For some, black might evoke negative connotations, associated with death, mourning, absence, or emptiness. For Kawakubo, however, it is nothing less than a radical enhancer of the details in her creations, a powerful canvas on which every seam, every fold, every deliberate imperfection takes on a supernatural intensity.

For those seeking some color, don't despair entirely: Kawakubo also included a bit of gray. Yes, gray. That's the entire rainbow you'll get, the only chromatic concession you'll receive. Because in the conceptual universe of the most disruptive Japanese designer, chromatic restriction is not a limitation, but liberation and pure rebellion, an act of resistance against the visual saturation of our time.

Another shocking element, characteristic of Kawakubo's language, has been the inclusion of grotesque masks that add a touch of secret ritual, an atmosphere of forbidden ceremony, and a deeply unsettling mystery to the presentation of her creations. Are the masks meant to intimidate, or to protect? Do they hide identity or reveal the true nature of the wearer? The ambiguity is intentional and calculated.

The hairstyles, for their part, evoke the image that each model has just come from the electric chair: hair standing on end, violently disheveled, as if a high voltage shock had passed through them seconds before stepping onto the runway. This isn't styling. It's forensic evidence.

This time, one might think that Kawakubo's creations carry a funereal air, and one would not be wrong. There is no doubt that Kawakubo has captured with surgical precision the moment unfolding globally, the zeitgeist filled with pessimism, existential anxiety, and crushing hopelessness that weighs on us every day.

This is not the elegant romanticism of Victorian gothic vampires, those seductive beings wrapped in velvet and mystery. No. This is the terrifying advance of nocturnal skeletons parading their bare bone structures down the runway, shamelessly revealing the anatomy of death itself, the interior without skin.

They are members of a dark, Kubrickian apocalyptic sect, think Eyes Wide Shut but without the seduction, only the ritual terror, or perhaps serial killers escaped from Arkham, parading before us. The discomfort can be unbearable and visceral, and that is exactly what Kawakubo seeks, seemingly deriving an almost sadistic pleasure from it.

Kawakubo will never be alien to provocation, to that impulse to shake the viewer to their very bones. She herself often says with almost Zen bluntness: "My energy comes from freedom." That freedom implies not surrendering to others' expectations, not seeking anyone's approval, not pursuing the pretty or the desirable. No concessions to the market or fleeting trends.

Kawakubo continues her powerful deconstruction of fashion, a task she has sustained for decades without ever yielding. There are savage cuts in the tailored suits and jackets, cuts made with violence. The garments have literally been destroyed and rebuilt by Kawakubo to give them new meaning and a deeper purpose. A second life.

Everything seems to be dragged inward by a wild, invisible gravitational force, as if each garment were being sucked toward the center of a real black hole, collapsing upon itself.

The textures are unsettling, almost repulsive to the eye. The details are gruesome, deliberately uncomfortable. Kawakubo has designed them to provoke rejection. The presentation feels more like a slasher horror film than a fashion show: implicit violence and fragmented bodies that defy conventional anatomy.

Once again, Kawakubo exposes herself without filters, and in her creations we truly see the interior: cuts laid bare, seams visible, stitches that would normally remain hidden under layers of perfect finishing. For Kawakubo, those traditionally invisible details are the truly important ones, the ones that tell the honest story of the garment, revealing the process and the effort, and that's why she never hides them.

It is a radical philosophy of constructive transparency: showing how it's made, revealing the entire process, exposing the entrails without shame.

Conventional fashion hides its processes with bourgeois modesty. Kawakubo celebrates them with defiant, almost militant pride.

But at the end of the dark hole, in the most unexpected moment, when everything seemed lost in the shadows, there is a glimmer of light. Kawakubo presents some final models in immaculate white, a powerful symbol of hope and a visual contrast that hits like lightning.

After all that suffocating darkness, white emerges as a declaration of survival, as irrefutable proof that even from the deepest black hole, some residual energy can escape, some life that refuses to be extinguished.

The night is darkest just before dawn, ancient wisdom reminds us. "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in," Leonard Cohen would tell us with his voice broken by pain and hope.

Once again, Rei Kawakubo positions herself at the forefront of the intellectual spectrum of contemporary haute couture. Once again she demonstrates, without ambiguity, that conceptual narrative reigns supreme when haute couture touches the truly artistic and becomes a philosophical statement.

Kawakubo risks everything to destroy the artificial boundaries that might divide fashion from philosophy, conceptual art, cosmic metaphors, and the deepest existential questions humanity has posed since it became conscious of itself.

Kawakubo does not seek to be pleasing or conventionally attractive. What she actively pursues is aversion, visceral provocation, detonating uncomfortable thoughts, forcing the viewer to confront their own preconceived ideas about beauty, death, chaos, and order.

Kawakubo is the punk rock of haute couture, that disruptive force that refuses to be domesticated by the market or trends, that spits in the face of established good taste. It's no surprise that John Waters, the Pope of Trash, the King of Elevated Bad Taste as Art, loves her so much and dedicated an entire chapter to her in his book Role Models.

It's not about pleasing the masses, selling thousands of units, or appearing on the covers of mainstream fashion magazines. It's about being willing to be hated and misunderstood in order to uphold an uncompromising artistic vision. Johnny Rotten would surely be proud of her, recognizing in Kawakubo a spiritual sister in rebellion.

And in that radical rejection of the complacent, in that superhuman courage to inhabit the abyss and turn it into uncomfortable beauty, Rei Kawakubo reminds us of something we've forgotten in our desperate search for comfort: true art was not designed to make us feel comfortable. It was created to make us feel awake. Painfully and violently awake.