For her latest offering, Rei Kawakubo revisited her dark, avant-garde roots with a collection of voluminous, structured shapes in various textures of black and gray. She titled the collection “Black Rose,” writing in her show notes that in her mind, “the dark beauty of the black rose symbolizes courage, resistance and freedom.”
Kawakubo opened the show with a series of calf-length coats that were nipped in at the waist and sometimes flared out at the hips. Large cutouts gave the appearance of separate garments layered in horizontal bands over dresses in subtle floral prints. In the nearly entirely monotone collection of black, white and gray, the designer also showed a long, puffy frock created from layered frills of brightly colored tulle, which peeked out from the neckline and below the hem of an intricately textured black jacket.
Other looks utilized different iterations of zebra print: large and small versions came together in a coat dress that puffed out at the hips in round cylinders of fabric, or were combined into a bulbous dress with a high neckline and bulging hips. Kawakubo made ample use of black lace, floral embroidery and a quilted black fabric that had a plastic-like sheen to it.
One standout piece was a dress in an intricate, large-motif jacquard and an embroidered external corset, the proportions of which were exaggerated into an extreme hourglass shape. The show ended with four all-black looks, each of which had its own voluminous shape: massive puff sleeves, a skirt of open rolls of fabric, or arms that hung below the knee. Kawakubo accessorized the fantastical looks with equally unconventional headpieces by Gary Card.