马路如虎口

Comme des Garcons: The Woman Behind The Boys

By J.D. Kidd

Daily News Record
Monday, May 9, 1983

TOKYO (FNS) — At Comme des Garcons’ understated new headquarters in the Aoyama district of Tokyo, no one claims to know where the boss lives, or even what she does with her spare time. Just four of a staff of 80 have her home telephone number. And the boss herself, after a couple of hours of questions, slumps back into the recesses of a leather couch and sighs. “I feel like I’ve been interviewed by a psychiatrist,” she says.

But if the boss, Rei Kawakubo, behaves like a recluse, it may be because of her singleness of purpose. Comme des Garcons is a $30-million-a-year operation she founded alone in 1973. It now boasts four lines — Homme, for men, and Comme des Garcons, Robe de Chambre and Tricot, for women. The company is so well established in Japan that Comme des Garcons does absolutely no advertising here. Its presence abroad, anchored by the Paris ready-to-wear showing and the Designers Collective showing in New York, is growing quickly — this year’s overseas sales will triple those in 1982.

Still, Kawakubo, the firm’s diminutive designer and president, is in no hurry to grow. Sales of her largest single line, Comme des Garcons, will actually be scaled back to about 7 per cent this year in Japan (to about $11 million); Homme will grow about 10 percent (to about $9.1 million). Tricot and Robe de Chambre are both small, but growing, with about $6.3 million expected between them in 1983.

Kawakubo concedes that she intends to make slow growth a policy, as she wants to continue both to preside over the company, which has more than 150 shops in Japan, and remain its chief designer.

To those who know her, that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because Kawakubo defies many of the cliches characterizing the successful businessperson and designer in postwar Japan.

“No,” she says firmly through an interpreter, “I was not deprived of too awfully much in the immediate postwar years, and so that experience did not have a decided impact on my later life, and my determination to found and run my own company.” (Other contemporaries, including Mitsuhiro Matsuda of Nicole and Issey Miyake, say the experience of having little to eat but sweet potatoes had a profound influence on their lives.)

“No,” she says again, “I was not influenced by any one major artist or movement in the 60s and 70s” — and certainly not by Yukio Mishima, the author and playwright, for whom Kawakubo’s contemporaries among the artistic community claim a particular affinity.

Artists as diverse as Tamasaburo Banido, the Kabuki actor, and Tadanori Yokoo, the graphic poster artist, have said Mishima was a major force. Kawakubo’s analysis of him, like many of her responses, is short and succinct: “He had a narrow view of people. I don’t much like that kind of viewpoint.”

Finally, there was (and is) no patron, no manager to direct the artist as she built her company. Nonetheless, Comme des Garcons is a tightly structured, well-run organization. It has five directors (each has been with Kawakubo at least seven of the 10 years), each of whom reports directly to her. Running the company is a hands-on experience. Kawakubo is almost certain to show up at one of the far-flung boutiques at any moment. She interviews each job applicant, and personally approves all hiring.

Though the company dates from 1973 (she chose the name for its phonetics, not the literal translation, “like the boys”), the concept came earlier. The only daughter of a Tokyo educator (she has two brothers), Kawakubo finished a fine arts major at Tokyo’s Keio University in 1964 and went to work as a stylist for mammoth Asahi Chemical, japan’s largest producer of acrylic fibers and fabrics. Experience with a large company led her elsewhere — into a free-lance stylist career in 1966. Seven years later, she began her firm.

A favorite Kawakubo line — “you have to know me through my clothes” — is often repeated in interviews, though in fact, she is one of the few Japanese designers able to articulate the feeling of her collections. Homme, for example, is certainly far less the offshoot of a successful women’s collection than a label unto itself. The feeling of the men’s line, though, is similar to the radical and often avant-garde Comme des Garcons’ women’s collection — not surprising, since fabrics for each collection are developed in tandem.

The palette for Homme invariably revolves around four colors — black, navy, gray and a natural beige. The form is traditional, though often oversized. The collection also occasionally carries some of the iconoclastic fashion for which the women’s collection, with its exposed seams, holes, layers and wrinkles, is better known. A popular Homme linen jacket for spring, for example, included nonfunctional vertical slits down each flank.

“(Homme) is my conception of what a man is, subtle, not over-styled like so many men’s collections,” Kawakubo says. “It’s for the kind of man I like working with.” Of course, Kawakubo’s sense of beauty is like no one else’s, and she insists that you have to look far beyond design details to appreciate it. “I try to reflect my (sense of beauty) not just in the clothes, but in the accessories, in the shows, in even this office and building. You have to see it as a total impression, and not look just at exposed seams and the black.”

The Comme des Garcons office, a two-floor affair in the heart of Tokyo’s fashion district, is in fact a strong reflection of the owner. Dominant pieces — the Italian leather furniture in the guest room, the replica of a 20s French studio lamp, the desks, chairs and shelves — are black or grey, and set off against washed gray concrete walls. The Homme corners of the office seem to carry a far more relaxed and open feeling than the sections for the women’s lines. Even staffers concede that the Comme des Garcons men are, well, a bit looser, both in dress (most women wear the house label and at least three are virtual carbon copies of Kawakubo) and attitude. On a single floor, there are four stereo systems, each playing (though quietly) a different sound: Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jarreau, New Wave and the American Armed Forces Far East Network Top 40.

Desks are arranged, Mitsui style, with division managers at the head of the “tee” and assistants arrayed on either side. Kawakubo is positively talkative when asked about her organization, which, despite appearances, is dominated by men (three of the five directors, all four line managers).

“Comme des Garcons is not like any other Japanese company,” she asserts. Hiring is strictly on merit, not sex or even educational background (a high school graduate may well be paid better than a college graduate at Comme des Garcons). Loyalty is intense, almost palatable. Even after the end of the collections season, staffers are still working from 9:00 to 9:00 or later — and the boss is usually right there, too.

Despite the firm’s track record as one of Japan’s most successful and growing labels, with influence on both domestic and foreign fashion, Kawakubo and her staff sometimes seem a bit insecure. They make careful inquiries about coverage planned for other designers, and especially Yohji Yamamoto, a close friend of Kawakubo and a designer who develops his collections from the fabric forward, a method considered the rule at Comme des Garcons.

But a little paranoia is probably good, given the numbers of people (80 in the home office, 80 in the boutiques) who now depend on Kawakubo for a living. She doesn’t even consider the time when she may have to choose between artist and managerial roles. “Because the company has grown this far, and because I am both president and designer, the company stands on what I design,” she says flatly. “That’s an inspiration. Commercial success is very important.” Burning out, of course, is “a reality. There is that fear of not being able to go on. But there is no one else — no one to give advice. Is that lonely, or difficult? Ah, so ne. But that’s reality.”

马路如虎口

Comme des Garcons: The Woman Behind The Boys

I do not fear death