When it comes to Comme des Garçons, there’s nothing straightforward about it.
First, the unique name doesn’t actually mean it’s a French brand, it’s actually Japanese. And while the luxury brand is known for its avant-garde designs, featuring blown-out silhouettes and anti-fashion design philosophy thanks to its founder Rei Kawakubo’s unique vision to fashion design. Comme des Garçons also has a diversified business model with several sub-brands under its giant umbrella.
Yes, we are talking about the instantly recognizable heart design from the Comme des Garçons PLAY line, which offers more casual, everyday wear. PLAY has also become the brand’s driving force with over US$100 million in turnover last year, according to Financial Times.
Not only that, Comme des Garçons also owns a successful fragrance line that has achieved cult status since it was launched back in 1994. The Parfum line offers unique scents, ranging from raw and abstract notes, and comes in asymmetrical and sculptural bottles.
In 2026, Comme des Garçons still remains privately-owned, which is an impressive feat in this fast-changing global luxury market. Not only does the company have several impressive sub-businesses, but Rei Kawakubo also used her success to support a number of talented young Japanese designers, such as Junya Watanabe and Kei Ninomiya.
Did you know that Rei Kawakubo’s life's work had also become the theme for 2017 Met Gala? With the official exhibition titled Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, the prestigious event also marked Kawakubo as the second living designer to have her designs as the sole subject of the exhibition, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.
So, with her extensive body of work and influence over the last five decades, here’s the complete MAYFEYR breakdown of Comme des Garçons.
The Beginning
Born in Japan during World War II, Rei Kawakubo never followed the conventional path. Raised by a single mother, who divorced her father to pursue a career as a school teacher, Kawakubo was known to have liked fashion design since early childhood. It was reported that she styled her school uniform in unconventional ways and dressed in clothing that her mother made for her.
Never formally trained as a fashion designer, young Kawakubo actually studied art and literature at Keio University, according to Business of Fashion. She then took her first job in the advertising department of the textile manufacturer Asahi Kasei before leaving to become a freelance fashion stylist in 1967 after her friend's encouragement. However, she stumbled upon difficulties when she couldn't find the clothing she wanted, and as a result, she took matters into her own hands.
In 1969, Kawakubo began designing her own womenswear, to rave reviews, and the experience led her to launch Comme des Garçons, which translates to “like [the] boys”, which was formally established in 1973. Suffice to say, with her eclectic designs and singular vision, her brand caught early success in Japan, and this led Kawakubo to open her Tokyo boutique in 1975 and then add a menswear line, Comme des Garçons Homme, in 1978, also to sterling reviews.
But during her early days, Kawakubo already made ripples due to her aesthetics and colour choices. In 1981, Comme des Garçons made its debut on the runway stage of Paris Fashion Week and left the press aghast with her controversial all-black clothing, which was designed in a deconstructed way. It was reported that her collection baffled the press so much that the Western media dubbed it "Hiroshima Chic".
The press may not have liked it, but Comme des Garçons’ all-black aesthetic definitely left an impression on her Japanese fans, so much so that the Japanese press started calling them as karasu-zoku or “the crows”.
“If I could do an all-black collection, then I would,” she told the Sunday Times in 1986. But in a later interview, Kawakubo confessed that she wasn’t trying to make a revolution with the colour: “What I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s,” as quoted in The New Yorker’s 2005 interview.
And that’s just how Rei Kawakubo works. With her experimental collection after collection, Comme des Garçons kept on challenging the fashion industry's standards of what makes clothing beautiful. This is especially true of her much-praised Spring/Summer 1997 collection, Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, which saw models dressed in protruding “lumps and bumps” shapes positioned around the body, aiming to challenge the 90s beauty standards and subvert the traditional notion of tailoring.
The 2000s: Heart Logo & Brand Collaborations
While Comme des Garçons was already an established name by the early 2000s, it was not until the launch of the PLAY line in 2002 that it became an even bigger brand worldwide. The idea was to provide an everyday casual clothing collection to bridge the gap between the mainline and a younger audience, with pieces like T-shirts, hoodies, cardigans, and knitwear.
However, the success of PLAY was also due to its recognizable heart-with-eyes symbol, which was created by Polish graphic artist Filip Pagowski. "The heart image happened simultaneously with, but independently of the creation of the PLAY line. It’s as if [Rei Kawakubo and I] were affected subliminally by each other’s work," explained Pagowski to AnOther Mag. He further added: “I remember working on something... not connected to anything. I got this idea of a red heart with a set of eyes. I drew it instantaneously and the first draft was it. I submitted it for another CdG project, for which it never made it, but eventually it resurfaced, making bigger waves as a logo for the PLAY line.”
And as we know, the PLAY line also allowed Comme des Garçons to enter the mainstream zeitgeist after its collaboration with Converse, which resulted in creating the hot commodity sneakers that was launched in 2009, with more than five million pairs sold.
As fashion labels are also a business, Comme des Garçons also never shied away from collaborating with other popular brands. From luxury fashion brands, such as Louis Vuitton and Moncler, to legendary other footwear labels like Converse, Nike, and Vans, Comme des Garçons has also worked together for a special collection with streetwear labels: Supreme, Stüssy, BAPE.
With its massive success and having more than 20 brands under the Comme des Garçons label (CDG, PLAY, Homme Plus, SHIRT, BLACK, among others), the Japanese brand could achieve all these possibilities with Rei Kawakubo’s strong vision and with the help of her husband, business partner, and CEO, Adrian Joffe.
One of Joffe’s innovative business concepts was the historic Dover Street Market department store, which opened back in 2004, and served as both a Comme des Garçons boutique and an art installation.
Inspired by Kensington Market, the store also carried other high-end brands that were carefully curated and selected by the CDG team, including big names like Azzedine Alaïa, Raf Simons, and Undercover, which was groundbreaking at the time. They also started the guerrilla stores trend, which definitely served as prototypes for the future pop-ups exhibition that many other fashion brands followed.
Today, the Dover Street Market has branches in London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Beijing, and Paris, according to its official website. The original store has also moved to a larger building in Haymarket, which used to be Burberry’s former headquarters.
But having diverse businesses and sub-brands hasn’t stopped Rei Kawakubo from giving opportunities to other young talents as well. In 1984, Junya Watanabe joined CDG as a pattern cutter, designing the Tricot line, and quickly became an important member of the design team.
Seeing his talent and knack for design, Kawakubo supported him with financial backing and blessings, and he launched his label under Comme des Garçons in 1992. A decade later, the Junya Watanabe MAN label came into the picture and became known for its experimental menswear outfits, which remain sought after to this day.
Then there was Kei Ninomiya, another prolific Japanese designer, who also worked as a pattern maker for CDG before launching his own label, Noir Kei Ninomiya, in 2012. Known for his all-black ensembles, similar to Kawakubo’s early work, Ninomiya is also known for his architectural garments that use modular components instead of traditional sewing, which reflects the experimental environment he developed while working under Kawakubo.
Beloved globally and referred to by many fashion designers as an inspiration (from McQueen to Prada), Comme des Garçons still stands strong as a brand that could never be duplicated.
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