‘Comme’ comment

This post titled ‘Collection Comme trivia’ is about Karasu Zoku and the French Connection. Thank you to Wendy Hughes Chuck for sharing her thoughts on another recent NGV exhibition:

Last year when I was preparing to guide in ‘Collecting Comme’ I read everything I could get hold of about Rei Kawakubo, her early collaboration with fellow designer Yohji Yamamoto, her husband-cum English interpreter Adrian Joffe, her education at Keio University, her career pre-fashion, her methods of working and the reports of interviews with the uncommunicative  Rei by battle-scarred Western fashion writers, and came across a few interesting titbits. Unfortunately, I only guided three times before the pandemic closed down the NGV. Hopefully, we’ll be able to pick up where we left off once the pandemic is over.

Karasu Zoku

As you enter the exhibition you are struck by the fact that all the outfits on the first plinth are black.  Melburnian women, of course, are famous for wearing black. Sydneysiders and Queenslanders arriving in Melbourne for business meetings feel somehow out of place in their pastels and bright colours.

In Japan, when Rei Kawakubo was launching Comme Des Garcons, Japanese women as a rule did not dress in black except for funerals when they would bring out a classic tailored black suit or dress or a sombre silk kimono that would do its duty for decades as funeral garb.

When I was working in Japan in the early 1970s my Japanese female colleagues would dress up for a wedding, a class reunion or an arranged marriage meeting (o-miai) in tailored silk clothes embellished with Mikimoto pearl earrings or a brooch, or on really special occasions, a hand-painted or embroidered kimono with long dangling butterfly sleeves (furisodo) if they were single or shorter wrist length sleeves if they were married.  For less formal occasions, women tended to match an embroidered Chinese silk blouse with a pencil slim tweed or gabardine skirt, again with the obligatory pearl brooch.

The well-heeled, well-travelled fashion conscious set, like my colleagues at Japan Air Lines, would spend their holidays queuing up to buy Gucci shoes and handbags in Rome  and Burberry trench coats in London.

Social rules about dressing were quite strict. Women would not wear white shoes until a particular day in May, for example.

Then, suddenly in the mid-1970s a group of young women started dressing in flapping voluminous black garments or baggy pants worn with  black lace-up shoes, the kind Japanese salarymen would wear with their business suits but that no self-respecting young lady would dream of going out in.

These trendies were sarcastically dubbed the karasu zoku which translates as “the crow tribe”. The garments they wore were expensive and were designed by three up-and-coming designers who went on to change the whole attitude to dress and style and put Japanese fashion on the map globally. These designers were Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme Des Garcons, and the subject of our current exhibition, ‘Collecting Comme’; her erstwhile personal and business partner, Yohji Yamamoto; and my personal favourite, Issey Miyake.

The French Connection

Comme des Garcons’ designer and founder, Rei Kawakubo, is Japanese, so how did her firm get the French name “Comme Des Garçons”?

After launching Comme Des Garcons in Japan in 1969 and incorporating her label in 1973, she did not show her collections in Paris until 1981, 12 years after she had chosen a French name for her brand. 

My research revealed that Kawakubo took the name from a line in a French pop song, Tous les garçons et les filles which was a massive hit for the teenage Françoise Hardy, not only in France but also worldwide, in 1962. Rei Kawakubo was born in 1942 so would have been 20 years old when the song came out. It was very popular with the Japanese who have always admired French art, style and cuisine. It was released in the United States in 1965 under the title, “The Yeh-Yeh Girl from Paris”.

Françoise Hardy sings wistfully that all the other boys and girls of her age (tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge) have paired off and are in love but she is all alone and nobody loves her. She hopes that one day someone will fall in love with her.

The third verse of the song begins: Comme les garçons et les filles de mon age, Connaitrais-je bientôt ce qu’est l’amour? (Translation: Like the boys and girls of my age, will I soon know what love is?). Why Kawakubo changed “comme les garçons” (like the boys) to “comme des garçons” (like boys) is not clear but the meaning is not substantially different.

Below are the lyrics of Francoise Hardy’s famous song. You can listen to her singing it on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx73jarucvM

*This is the third verse which Rei Kawakubo adopted for the name of her fashion brand.