Look 11, dress
2016
Invisible Clothes collection, spring-summer 2017
Medium
wool cotton nylon, polyester, cupra, and nylon and metal (fastening)
Measurements
139.0 cm (centre back) 33.0 cm (waist, flat)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of the artist, 2025
© Comme des Garçons
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Kawakubo’s Invisible Clothes collection featured enormous black dresses and obscuring three-dimensional forms. Challenged to describe it, fashion journalist Sarah Mower wondered whether the show’s true subject was ‘the invisibility of women, rather than clothes’. By defying expectations of what a garment should be and stripping away associations of desire or ‘sexual overkill’, Kawakubo proposes a different mode of embodiment, reminding us that beauty has no single,
fixed definition.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Japan
Inscription
label, centre back neckline, printed in black ink on white synthetic fabric: COMME des GARCONS
Accession Number
2025.776
Department
International Fashion and Textiles