Runway-documented finds from the early career of Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo are a rare find for buyers and collectors—on the third day of Paris Fashion Week, an over 500-piece lot caused a bidding war at the Piasa auction house.
Fans from around the world gathered at the proverbial altar of the goddess of avant garde fashion (or tapped in via phone to bid) for an unusual opportunity to procure rare Kawakubo works. Think: twisted black wool coats from the early 1980s, and abstract printed jackets from the mid-1970s. Every piece was curated by Japanese collector Hiroaki Narita, who, with his business partner, has a warehouse in Japan with thousands of holy grail items from Comme des Garçons and Maison Martin Margiela. Narita is a collector by trade, and also founded Japan’s first auction houses devoted to design.
The sale was one of the largest collections of Comme des Garçons clothing and memorabilia to ever come to auction, and featured over 450 documented runway pieces straight from some of the most highly regarded Comme des Garçons collections of all time: Pirates (1981), Noir (1988), Metamorphosis (1994), and Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body (1997). Plus, obscure hand-knit finds from early lines like Tricot and Robe de Chambre, all dating from the 1970s to 1999. To put things into perspective, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking 2017 Costume Institute exhibition Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between had 140 examples of Kawakubo’s work on display.
It was a crisp, mild day in Paris, the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré humming with the midday buzz of office workers getting late lunches and black SUVs that sped by to get to the biggest shows of the day, during one of the most important seasons to date. The auction kicked off at the same time as Jonathan Anderson’s Dior womenswear ready-to-wear debut, which meant some of fashion’s biggest fans and collectors were toggling between their digital bidding screens and runway livestreams.
Inside, the collection was modeled on mannequins in the showroom alongside a monumental Louis Vuitton trunk from Cindy Sherman’s personal apartment—a collaboration with the French house—which is part of another upcoming auction at Piasa, focused on the famed artist’s Paris apartment. Racks of the Comme des Garçons pieces were on display: I spotted the famed rainbow, hyper-layered t-shirt that Parker Posey wore in the 1995 cult classic film Party Girl, and a sequin mini shrug straight from the Transformed Glamour fall 1999 show. The display took up two rooms, where superfans were welcome to touch, feel, and try on. The auction house is mostly known for design objects (with a side of jewelry), and that’s how Narita got involved, as a collector of midcentury modern objects himself.
Narita had wanted to do a Comme des Garçons auction for a decade. A voracious collector, he actually secured most of the pieces in the auction over the course of one year. Many of them are from former Comme des Garçons staff and private collectors in Japan, and have been preserved for decades, never worn. Others are from under-the-radar Japanese auctions. A man of few words, Narita wears some of the pieces from the Comme des Garçons menswear collections. The day before the sale begins, he showed up in a minimalist buttoned-up jacket and a bowler hat.
Narita focused his acquisitions on the noteworthy pieces from Kawakubo’s womenswear work specifically, with an emphasis on the materiality and textiles that stand out. That meant jackets with buttons made of deer horns, and raw pleated muslin dresses with unfinished edges. “I wanted to understand Kawakubo’s ideas,” he told Vogue. “So, I bought her works. Now I understand her ideas from 1970 to 1999.” Hiroaki traveled with his son, a 15-year-old photographer who shot the entire catalog for the auction in an unconventional style, with bright backgrounds and stylized images.
“This was, for us, an extraordinary opportunity to be able to launch our fashion department with probably one of the best collections in the world for the company, if not the best, and the largest,” said Paul Viguier, deputy director of Piasa. An almost archetypal Frenchman, he has long slicked back hair, oversized brows, and wears colorful little scarves tied tightly around his neck. I met him smoking outside the auction house. “We emphasize it’s about designers, it’s about creations, it’s not about fashion,” he said. “It’s not about wherever it is, I mean, is it wearable? Is it the right size? We don’t care. It’s about the item as a work of art. Like we don’t really care if a chair is comfortable, but at the end of the day, our collectors, they use their chairs. Even if they pay €200,000 or €300,000 for it. They just live with the work.”
Taking a look at one of the famous Lumps and Bumps dresses in the auction, it’s easy to categorize the objects as art. But despite the setting, one must remember that Kawakubo has always said that her work is just clothing.
The auction began with a modest start, kicking off with early ’80s handknit sweaters and simple, wool jackets from the brand that sold for $250-$400. Bargains! Walking into the Comme des Garçons boutique on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, just a few blocks away from Piasa, you certainly wouldn’t be able to buy anything at that price, save for a perfume, wallet, or perhaps a small accessory from one of the diffusion lines.
“There are a lot of private individuals who are going to come and get just a couple pieces they’re going to wear,” said Viguier. “I think people realize, now, that for a couple hundred of euros, you can buy a museum piece—a fragment of history.”
As the auction continued into the hundreds, things got more competitive. Lot 148, a cotton and wool draped cloth coat, sold for $15,422. Another bidding war broke out for a black cotton distressed dress from 1980, which sold for $16,900. According to Piasa, it set the world record for a Comme des Garçons piece sold at auction. “We are very happy that there were many acquisitions by important museums all around the world,” said a representative from Piasa’s PR firm. A pink two-dimensional coat from the Sweeter than Sweet fall 1995 collection went for $7,600. Harder to find, early 1980s pieces, like the cotton-smoked black and white top from the Round Rubber collection of spring 1984, were estimated at $300-$400, but sold for $4,900.
“There are very hardcore collectors and you wouldn’t tell when you meet them,” said Viguier. “They’re not the fashion type. They’re just super focused on what they’re collecting and they’re super knowledgeable.” Buyers were able to get vintage promotional catalogs, printed campaign materials, and copies of the brand’s infamous limited magazine Six, for a few hundred dollars. The very same style of leather Mary Jane flats that Jean-Michel Basquiat modeled on the 1987 runway sold for a mere $617.
“Her mind is very crazy,” Narita says of Kawakubo, who he says he is too intimated to meet. “It’s a very unbelievable power. She’s the number one designer in the world.”