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Peoples' eyes constantly deceive them, and that was certainly true in Paris in the fall of 1996, when Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind Comme des Garçons, presented a collection of dresses swollen with huge lumps. In profile, the models looked like hunchbacks or camels tipped onto their sides. There were smaller, kidney-shaped masses on shoulders and arms, most covered in cheerful gingham. The clothes confounded critics, even those used to Kawakubo's abstract methods. Amy Spindler wrote in The New York Times that Kawakubo had ''invented whole new deformities for women.'' During the show, which was conducted in silence, one photographer muttered, ''Quasimodo.''
''Lumps and Bumps,'' as the collection came to be called, illustrates the difficulties for a designer of being not merely original but also a modernist. Kawakubo said she was interested in exploring ''volume and space.'' If you begin with the outline made by her shapes (the classic ''silhouette'') and then pull back -- moving away, as it were, from the confinements of fashion -- you realize that Kawakubo has in fact recreated a reality of the late 20th century: the individual seemingly joined to her backpack and her burdens; even the act of talking on a cellphone assumes a spatial connection, producing what appears in the abstract to be a growth. Kawakubo's objective was not to distort the female body but rather to express a thought that probably, for her, began with a gesture or a glimpse. Some designers, like Alber Elbaz of Lanvin and Azzedine Alaïa, solve problems of dressmaking -- putting darts in a skirt to give it softer volume. Kawakubo, working more in the spirit of an artist than any designer today, attacks the problems of consciousness.
Kawakubo has been making clothes for nearly 40 years, always under the label Comme des Garçons, which means ''like some boys'' and in a way suggests a gang. In the '80s, this could be seen in the hordes of black-clad women, many of whom considered themselves feminists and were eager, like the architect Kazuyo Sejima, whose firm recently completed the New Museum in Lower Manhattan, to express themselves radically. In 1992, Kawakubo decided to branch out and gave a young patternmaker, Junya Watanabe, his own label, a move that revealed her to be an innovative businesswoman as well. By the end of the '90s, ''multibrands'' had taken over the industry. Since then, she has added Tao by Tao Kurihara and, more recently, a youth-oriented label called Ganryu, by the baby-faced Fumito Ganryu, 31, who has been with the company for four years. Kawakubo and her husband, Adrian Joffe, also operate the eclectic Dover Street Market in London, giving the Comme des Garçons company another way to burnish its avant-garde image while continuing to grow. These new ventures now account for 22 percent of the company's annual sales, which in 2007 were $180 million, said Joffe.
Editors still follow Kawakubo's shows with rapt interest. But more and more you wonder why they go. What do they expect to learn from this small, dour woman whose gnomic pronouncements (''Red is the new black'') would surely qualify as Gumpisms if they hadn't been issued before we found such things funny? As it is, hardly any of the editors wear her clothes nowadays -- and that's also true in Tokyo, said Kazuhiro Saito, the editor in chief of Japanese Vogue. ''Even five years ago, Comme des Garçons was kind of part of the national wardrobe,'' said Tiffany Godoy, a writer who has followed Tokyo fashion for a decade and who has recently published a book on Harajuku street style. ''But that's not the case anymore.'' And while Kawakubo offers women the possibility to own a runway garment for $1,000 -- largely because she doesn't spend a lot of money on marketing and because she uses the same mills and factories she has always used -- young Japanese women prefer European brands at more than twice the price. ''They want to look like celebrities,'' Godoy pointed out.
Kawakubo's influence, then, on the self-perceptions of women, on beauty and, above all, on tailoring, is not what it once was. Or, let's say her methods of working -- independently, mostly in solitude and with absolute control over every facet of her business -- are so at variance with the rest of the industry that it's harder for a contemporary audience to appreciate her sensibility. Much of fashion today is accessible to people because of information technology. But it is also accessible because the most desirable brands are designed by groups of people -- teams for bags and shoes, others for clothes. There is nothing wrong with this approach -- many artists work in collaboration, after all -- but it scarcely produces the same quality of insight, makes the same impertinent claims on our feelings, as the individual working only for the satisfaction of her own ideas. As Sonya Park, a stylist in Tokyo who knows Kawakubo well, said recently, ''She makes her profit so that she can do something new the next season. It's always about the next project. That's why I see her as someone who wants to express the world through fashion. She just wants to keep on doing it.'' This is an artistic choice, and a sane one, a combination that doesn't really work in the dress business. The fact that Kawakubo made it work is remarkable, and it's why more than ever she deserves our attention.
In December I went to see her in Tokyo. I was hoping to write about how she had created a multibrand company that completely anticipated the luxury groups in Europe and at the same time was different from them. Unlike other designers of her generation, Kawakubo didn't just produce cheaper spinoff lines; she created separate and distinct brands. Her approach was a lot like Toyota and Lexus, or Estée Lauder and Clinique. Though each brand was separate, they existed under one umbrella. Yet once I started talking with Watanabe and Kurihara, as well as people in Kawakubo's outer circle, it was clear the structure idea was just something to hang my hat on. The place is actually an extension of Kawakubo's brain.
The first thing you should know about the Comme des Garçons headquarters is that it occupies five floors of an ordinary office building on a busy road, each floor as drably functional as the next. Nothing to reveal here except its nothingness. There is no receptionist to greet you or to direct you to the appropriate floor. This would only be a problem if you were actually expected at Comme des Garçons, but very few people are welcomed there, and that also applies to family members. ''No husbands, boyfriends, wives, daughters -- never,'' said Joffe. Which brings us to the second thing you should know about Comme des Garçons: it's a very secretive place.
Kawakubo, who is 65, said that when she first raised the idea with Watanabe about having his own label, she wasn't thinking of a business strategy. She just thought Watanabe, who had joined the company straight from design school, was talented. One day she said to him in her half-chiding way, ''Isn't it about time you started your own label?'' Design assistants at Comme des Garçons are patterners, and as patterners they must develop a feel not only for shape and texture but also, more tryingly, for what Kawakubo is feeling at the start of a collection, whether she is ''happy'' or ''angry,'' sentiments she rarely communicates in any detail. As she once explained, ''At the start, I am not exactly certain what I am thinking myself. It is guesswork with us.'' What Kawakubo hopes to achieve from this open process is that the patterners will think more intuitively and come up with things that will surprise her.
Some 300 people apply for jobs each year at the company, with about 10 making it to the final stage, where they are tested on pattern-cutting skills. Kurihara was hired in 1998, after graduating from Central Saint Martins in London. She said she didn't consider staying in Europe and working for a fashion house there. ''My passion was for Comme des Garçons,'' said Kurihara, who is a girlish 34, with a short crop of bangs and a taste for lacy blouses. Initially she was placed on Watanabe's staff, and then put in charge of knitwear design. She said she had little contact with Kawakubo. ''I was a member of Junya's team, so I had no connection with her,'' she said. ''It was completely different work.''
In 2005, Kawakubo offered Kurihara her own label. Drawing ingeniously on craft and feminine ornament -- one collection featured paper garments that evoked the perishable nature of a wedding ceremony -- Tao has found a niche with editors and buyers. Kawakubo said, ''I saw similarities in Tao's taste for a while. In her style, she had a young girl's way of dressing. I always thought there were possibilities.''
But while Kawakubo admits that creating new brands has been good for the company -- giving it a future that presumably will reach beyond her lifetime -- she resists the idea that altruism is involved. In the course of discussing why other fashion houses don't seem to recognize the benefits of bringing along young talent -- particularly aging European houses without a successor in place -- Kawakubo suddenly interjected, ''I don't want to be seen as the big benefactor of fashion!'' She laughed for a moment. ''It's not that great.'' Kawakubo, suffering from a cold, was wearing a soft pair of black jodhpurs and a royal blue cardigan buttoned over a white T-shirt.
Her face resumed its frown as Joffe translated. ''We all benefit each other,'' she said of the group, ''and it's all for the benefit of Comme des Garçons.''
Anyone who spends time in the company, with Kurihara or with Watanabe, whose bearing and dry disposition makes you think of a sumo wrestler, feels the existence of boundaries, both physical and psychological. To an extent, these boundaries involve Japanese business customs, like excessive courtesy, but for the most part they are set up by Kawakubo. For her, separateness and neutrality are indispensable to the creative process. At the same time, she exerts enormous influence over the company, largely through her values. She avoids expressing critical opinions, though a dislike is often registered with a ''mmm.'' And she doesn't comment on Kurihara's and Watanabe's designs, which they seem to accept. As Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, a creative director whose London agency does work for Comme des Garçons, said, ''I think Rei sets such high standards for herself. If you're working there, it's like Harvard Law School, and you know that.''
For example, at one point during my conversation with Watanabe, who is 46, he said that he's often asked by other companies to do side work. He has done collaborations with brands like Brooks Brothers and Moncler. But, he said, ''I can only manage to do what I do here. The work is so much that sometimes I want to escape.''
I asked Watanabe what the source of that pressure was. He thought for a moment and said, ''Kawakubo.''
Later, she told me, ''The pressure comes to them because I give it to myself. And it wouldn't come to them if I didn't give it to myself. The process of getting there is exactly the same for them -- not being satisfied. With Junya, I'm not sure how many times he repeats until he gets the perfect thing. I don't know about his actual process. I don't know how angry people get with him or how dissatisfied he gets with himself.''
This surprised me a little. ''You don't know that?'' I asked.
Kawakubo shook her head. ''If I interfered one second, then I'd have to do everything. There would be no end to it.'' She added, ''I imagine that what I want to do with an idea is clearer to me than what Junya may want to do. I get the impression that he goes in roundabout ways to find the solution.''
As Kurihara suggested, the boundaries at Comme des Garçons extend to the designers' work areas and the collections they are preparing. Kawakubo and her team occupy the third floor. No one else is permitted to enter their studio. (I was allowed a glimpse, but it was basically an excursion to Delphi on an off day. Anything I might have hoped to see was shrouded in muslin.) Watanabe and Kurihara have separate studios on the second floor. They have complete creative control over their collections, and Kawakubo does not see them until they are presented in Paris.
Teasingly, I asked Kurihara, who is tougher, I think, than she appears, if she would tell me what she is planning for her show later this month.
''Oh, no!'' she said, a hand going to her mouth. She giggled. ''I can't say.'' I asked her if she tells Watanabe what she is doing. The hand dropped away, and a note of pride entered her voice. ''In the beginning I would tell him,'' she said. ''But not now. I keep it separate.''
For as much as journalists remark on Kawakubo's cryptic silences, it is actually language -- or verbosity -- that inhibits the creative process, shutting off the possibilities of imagination. Katsuya Kamo, a hairstylist who works on Watanabe's shows, said as much when he told me, ''Western designers explain everything. 'The clothes like this, the music and lighting like that.' It gets complicated.'' Watanabe, by contrast, says almost nothing, but that refusal, Kamo said, leaves the hairstylist room to exercise his own imagination. As he put it, ''The Western designers give me a tiny space to work in, but Junya'' -- Kamo spread his arms wide -- ''is like this.''
Kawakubo said she doesn't know how other designers run their businesses, but she has the idea they're not involved in every part. ''Therefore, they haven't got the courage or the faith to give something away or give someone in their company the freedom -- because it's not all covered by one eye,'' she said. ''This company is very strict. I know exactly what Adrian is doing, what somebody else is doing. I always know whether it's in the rule or breaking the rule. For me, it's certain what Comme des Garçons is.
I suspect with other companies, it's not so black and white, and so maybe they don't have the courage to do this kind of system.''
Yet, as she readily admitted, the system contains a flaw. It was Kawakubo who planted the idea with Watanabe and the other designers of having their own labels, and it's Kawakubo who ultimately has fiscal responsibility. This came up as Kawakubo and I were discussing Jun Takahashi, the designer of Undercover, who has managed to create a conceptual style in Japan that isn't in the shadow of Comme des Garçons -- though, as he said, ''Kawakubo has done everything.''
''I think the depth and breadth of Jun may come from the fact that he is 100 percent independent -- with all the advantages and disadvantage that it has,'' Kawakubo told me. ''Junya and Ganryu don't have to worry about the bottom line.'' She doesn't see how that can be helped, though. ''It's plus and minus,'' she said.
In a way, Comme des Garçons functions like an old-fashioned guild system, preparing apprentices for the day when the master will leave. And one day she will leave. But the woman who constitutes the nearest thing to a moral center in the fashion world, who believes in acting on faith, does not plan to be forever a shrine to her own ideals. ''When I stop, the Comme des Garçons brand will stop but the company will continue,'' she said. The barest trace of a smile flickered across her face. ''Doesn't that go without saying?''
