Who are the postmodern royals? With castles and historical titles now treated as artifacts, entertainment — Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette marks its 20th anniversary this year — and tourist attractions, royalty seems far removed from its golden days. Across centuries, dynastic power has taken different forms, from the Ottoman and Mughal courts to Bourbon France and Qing China. The 20th century dismantled many of these monarchies yet concentrated privilege and family succession remain familiar structures. In fact, today’s conglomerates seem to invite comparison with an older aristocracy, their influence exercised through ownership, patronage, and the power to shape cultural desire.
Comme des Garçons SS27, aptly titled “When royal life and everyday life become one”, can be read as Kawakubo-san’s attempt to question the concept of royal authority again. Abstract, jarring silhouettes, cartoonish imitation crowns by Nobuki Hizume, and reconfigured workwear fabrics seem to be her way of knocking the glorification of power inherent in royalty off its pedestal. Considered a reigning monarch herself in the avant-garde fashion sphere, Kawakubo-san has always used her unique sensibilities to engineer garments that challenge their own purpose. Even the very setting of a Comme show enacts these constraints: a tight, brutalist space with little room for the humongous clothes and even less for the audience. I think that’s really where royal life and everyday life become one.
With the current fashion industry taking whichever 18th century references it can manage, CDG SS27 works by abstracting the boundaries between the monarchs and the mundane. Familiar CDG nonfigurative silhouettes adopt a patchwork of both novel and familiar textiles from the house. The material that both closed and opened the show was denim. It was given new prominence in Kawakubo-san’s arsenal for mainline Comme. We see denim cocooning lustrous red fabric gathered beneath its jagged raw edges in the opening look. Its again layered but with hair, traditional upholstery fabric, and finished in gold-toned stitching in the next look. For the third, its decorated with laser-cut leather pieces that seem to resemble leaves and feathers. Later in the finale, it was denim distortion at its finest when adorned with crowns fit for the Comme kings and queens: bulbous, gilded Takeo Arai bouffants.
In each look, the fabrics seem to fight one another for dominance. For example, look ten sets olive-gold corduroy against an ornate crimson-and-gold fabric, with exposed white edges that suggest upholstery being pulled apart. In look seventeen, it’s as if the white padded ribcage is trying to keep the red-and-white polka-dot fabric from bursting at the seams. Lastly, look nineteen brings together royalty of the old and the new through a patchwork of pinstriped fabric quilted into swollen, cushion-like volumes, red-stained chiffon, and shaggy fur regalia. The corporate uniform meets the trappings of the old monarchy, both inflated beyond their familiar proportions.
Fashion can be as ridiculous and frivolous as the recorded behavior of royals in the past, both played out under the public spotlight. Yet it can also reflect the struggles of its time. Here, the competing fabrics and exaggerated proportions give those tensions a physical form, with every claim to grandeur threatening to come apart at the seams.
So, who are the postmodern royals now? The tech giants, billionaires, and lords of corporations? Or the artistic and cultural leaders? Or, in some way, is it everybody? Perhaps we all participate in the spectacle, whether we wear the crown or admire it from the audience. Beneath all the regality, its authority still depends on what we are willing to believe.
