Piasa will auction one of the world’s most significant collections dedicated to Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo and her cult label Comme des Garçons.
To start the September in style, the City of Light has prepared an abundance of exhibitions and cultural programs around fashion this autumn. Scheduled to take place between September 29 and October 7, 2025, the primary event will be the Spring/Summer 2026 Ready-to-Wear Paris Fashion Week, no doubt. Beyond the official runway shows, you can also learn about French fashion designer and master couturier Paul Poiret (1879–1944) in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; the Palais Galliera offers two fashion exhibitions (one about Rick Owen, while the other titled ‘Fashion on the Move #3’) and La Galerie Dior is always a good idea, of course.
With a great timing, Piasa Auction House presents a monumental sale from a private collection on the 1st October, titled ‘Rei Kawakubo & Comme des Garçons, 1969–1999’. Japanese collector Hiroaki Narita assembled the selection over the past ten years. The auction offers more than 500 lots – creations spanning Kawakubo’s early experimental years through her late landmark collections. Before the sale, a public exhibition of selected garments will be held between 26-30 September at Piasa’s showroom, located on the prestigious Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The central location is an easy twenty-minute walk from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
Rei Kawakubo (born in Tokyo in 1942) the Japanese fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garçons, is one of the most influential, radical and often controversial figures in contemporary fashion. Her significance extends well beyond clothing design – it touches art, philosophy, and social identity. Kawakubo challenged the approach of fashion being primarily about beauty and luxury, and disrupted the Western ideals of symmetry, polish, and glamour. In her creative manifesto, she claimed to ‘break the idea of clothes’. Her work often blurs the line between fashion and art, presenting clothes as conceptual objects that provoke thought rather than just adorn the body.
She founded the now ‘cult label’ Comme des Garçons (‘like boys’) in Tokyo in 1969. The label was officially incorporated as a company in 1973. By the mid-1970s, it had developed a following in Japan before debuting internationally in Paris in 1981, fuelling its global breakthrough. Comme des Garçons is widely recognised as an important fashion house in the world, yet it continues to carry the aura of a cult label. Rei Kawakubo has never designed with mass appeal in mind. Her collections often reject trends, beauty standards, and commercial viability.
Interestingly, although Rei Kawakubo did not collaborate much with others, she did with H&M in 2008. Instead of ‘going mainstream’, she intended to challenge conventions, democratise access to avant-garde design, and experiment with how radical fashion could exist in the fast-fashion world.
In 2017, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute dedicated a whole exhibition to her work, entitled ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between’. The exhibition underlined her cultural status, as she is the second living designer to get a Costume Institute exhibition in her honour, preceded by Yves Saint Laurent only. Her cultural significance lies in her ability to use fashion as a philosophical and artistic language—challenging beauty, gender norms, consumer culture, and the very definition of clothing.
‘Among the many collectors devoted to Rei Kawakubo, the over 500-piece collection assembled by Japanese collector Hiroaki Narita stands out for its unique approach. ‘Hiroaki Narita acts somewhat like a researcher,’ notes Paul Viguier, head of the collection sale. ‘He wanted to carry out an archival work, which led him to acquire pieces from each of Kawakubo’s legendary collections: Pirates (1981), Noir (1988), Metamorphosis (1994), and Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body (1997)’ – shared Piasa.
Source: press release. Photo credits: © Simon Narita, courtesy of Piasa.
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