Bita Rad

British designer Matthew Williamson was just announced as the successsor to Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, as the next talent to partner up with H&M.  Exciting! Matthew Williamson’s bursts of colorful patterns and prints are a great way to juxtapose Comme des Garçons’ dark solid pieces. Williamson used to be the creative director of Pucci, and is a huge fan of Eastern influences ie. Indian batik and embroidery. My favorite collection of his was for Spring 2008 RTW where he merged Indian, African, and Mayan trims flawlessly. . . and a certain special someone was spotted strutting the runway!

click here to see footage from the show.

Thursday November 13th, Comme des Garçons for H&M hit stores. LA Times’ Max Padilla calls it “avant garde for the masses”, and that’s exactly what it is. Why is this collaboration so awesome? Because Rei Kawakubo, design director of the high-end Comme des Garçons collections, is infamously anti-fashion and has made her collections to symbolize just that. If it’s trendy, popular, in high-demand, or up-and-coming, she is not into it. Padilla says, “She’s known for head-scratching runway shows, the kind that make you feel like you’re the only one not in on the joke (women in hunchback pillow dresses and men in skirts), as well as for opening temporary “guerrilla stores” in gritty neighborhoods such as downtown L.A.”

What category of fashion design does Comme des Garçons fall into, you ask? Deconstructed shapes and nontraditional lines and techniques. Stuff that you just don’t understand, and shouldn’t even try. Rei Kawakubo prefers to consider her designs as conceptual art rather than practical pieces. So how would she manage to mesh the impracticality of Comme des Garçons with fast-fashion powerhouse H&M?  Behold:

See the full mens and womens collections here .

See how supermodel and Cali girl Erin Wasson styled herself in the November 2008 issue of Nippon Vogue in pieces from the Comme des Garçons for H&M collection here.