Back to Black

For many, 80s fashion is encapsulated by the work of designers such as Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler—Parisian dramatists who created a world of color and power with their bold, broad shouldered designs. But the true innovators of that time were the Japanese designers—Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo among them—whose distressed all-black ensembles anticipated, and permanently changed, the ways in which we would wear and think about clothes in this decade. NOWNESS celebrates the start of Japan Fashion Week today with images of archive Comme des Garcons pieces, which will be on display in an installation designed by architect Kazuyo Sejima at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo later this month.