^ Not really, cause the ruffles dude can’t afford it.. if this is all you can ‘offer’, then you’re a termite. If you more than offered for decades, and designers that had people weeping just days ago are still living off your ideas and you are pushing 80 and this makes you happier than suits and dresses for the office, which you keep selling in plenty of other lines, then why not, what’s the harm really lol.
This is on the lines of what we talked about Bruce Weber.. his ‘best years’ are gone but it doesn’t make the last chapter of his life less important in terms of evolution as a creator.. assuming you have some level of interest on the latter and it’s not just about.. output.
Then again, unlike photography, designers (the very pillar that sustains everything) are seen as machinery that in an event that is ultimately a set of suggestions on some sort of sartorial creativity and has historically, in everything from concept to show to actual product, not been what one ultimately finds in a store (aka. fashion week), must remain subjected at all costs to the most redundant notion of ‘dressing for the day’.
I’m not even going to get into dressing as an adult woman vs. as a toddler.. that’s subjective and seems as debatable as the interest of men in womenswear.. maybe it’s a fantasy, maybe it’s not, it’s all as inconsequential as it is personal.
Oh yay.. Comme’s gone from dressing women like silly 2nd-grade school play costumes to dressing adult women like silly paper dolls… I get that this label doesn’t need to make the slightest effort anymore with all the bland basics that the million diffusion lines having sprouted from the OG CdG making easy bank. And good for her I suppose, that she wants to troll the industry with these silly 2nd-grade talent show/paperdoll costumes on women. However, this is on the same level as that Tomo guy and his shapeless Rainbow Brite ruffles.
^ NO?!! different life philosophies I guess, but to me, it's like saying that someone who's spent 50 years being a fantastic painter and has more than proved himself in his field, must remain consistent at all times and can't have his fun on an ipad and sell it if he feels like it. Or that an excellent composer is above releasing a series of lullabies, or making a score for a movie. Didn't Philip Glass write the score for the Avengers or something wildly dumb like that?. And.. didnt Yohji want to direct porn? . It's about balancing, and earning the luxury of treating yourself to something that probably means next to nothing for others. You can afford to be unapologetically self-indulgent if you have a clean record, have provided more substance to your field than most of the people in it, and certainly didn't build your foundation out of fraud but authenticity. Now if that's all you've ever shown.. I don't know.. sounds like you don't want to do this for very long, banality is no solid ground for anything.
Different ways of aging, I guess, the majority of us aspires to the dignified Yohji way but personally.. I'd get bored, I'd probably opt for Rei's way, in the same way I'd love to flip nothing but burgers if I had spent the last 40 years dealing with a Michelin-only insufferable clientele. Anything but the kind of aging Yves went through in his last days (hanging on to his sad little numbers, upset that no one liked them), or worse, uttering nonsense and serving influencers and celebrities with attention-starved fashion design like Karl, hell no.. someone please unplug me if that's in the cards for me.
Brava. You’re the only one making sense in these Comme des Garçons threads. Great lucidity and generosity with regard to the late periods of long artistic careers, and a tonic to the relevance-obsessed myopia usually on display in the forums. Rei has paid her dues long ago.