Rei Kawakubo

An impressively broad and highly entertaining mix of established and emerging fashion scholars tackling, with style, that most enigmatic, contrarian and complex of designers … While some of the paradoxes of Kawakubo]s work remain, this collection enlightens and delights like the designer herself. * Toby Slade, University of Technology Sydney, Australia *An engaging and thought-provoking collection, exploring Rei Kawakubo’s radical contribution within and beyond fashion. Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the work of one of the most challenging designers and creatives of our times. * Flavia Loscialpo, Solent University, UK *This array of notable voices from fashion academia offers a great companion for those who want to study the work of Rei Kawakubo, by providing theoretical tools and concepts by eminent thinkers ranging from Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan to Julia Kristeva. * Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Ghent University, Belgium *The connective thread that runs between [the chapters] is that Kawakubo’s work reimagines, and demands that we reconsider, the very idea of fashion. It is this argument, and the breadth of scholarly perspectives included, that gives this book its value. While many of the essays are written by fashion scholars, others are by art historians, business and management scholars and curators. This multiplicity of viewpoints allows the book to speak to Kawakubo’s approach to retail design, exhibition and writing about her own work. ..[It] presents the opportunity for fresh takes on the decades long career of this exceptional designer. … Overall, the book advances an argument for Kawakubo’s strength as an artist-designer who has entirely reimagined what clothes are, what fashion can be, and where creativity can take us. * Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture *

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘What is Philosophy?’ (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Stanley Cavell and the Arts (Bloomsbury, 2020) and, with David Denny, co-editor of Lars von Trier’s Women (Bloomsbury, 2018).