Comme des garcons? mais oui !!!!
Source: Comme Des Garcons for H&M '08
Designer collaborations with the high street really get the fashion pulse racing, from the early days of Julien MacDonald and Jasper Conran for Debenhams to the new generation of young Brits afforded a capsule range by Topshop: Peter Jensen, Emma Cook, Mario Schwab and Jonathan Saunders to name a few. Not only does this expose a younger audience to the designers, it democratizes good design without paying premiums for the best fabrics.
And how many young people can afford those dry cleaning bills anyway? 40° and a bit of Persil isn’t as harmless as you might think.
So Comme Des Garcons for high street giant H&M is big news, for this most avant-garde of labels (Rei Kawakubo is the designer’s designer after all) is launching in stores next month. H&M creative advisor Margareta van den Bosch states
“We have tremendous respect for Kawakubo’s fashion philosophy questioning fashion’s ingrained patterns and we admire her artistic approach to design.”
Sneak peeks from W magazine’s September issue show a knee-length dress which I can only describe as citygirl in suit meets Little Bo Peep. There’s lots of black. Clownish harem trousers and drop crotched shorts, spotty shirts, Chaplin-esq styling and asymmetrical tailoring, all of which makes black more fun than austere. A triumph in itself?
As one fashion blog commentator remarked on the preview – “I’m buying every piece, the less wearable the better!”
