A Chat With Rei Kawakubo as She Wins the Noguchi Award: “It’s Hard to Find Interesting, New Things”

It’s rare to see Rei Kawakubo in person, let alone hear the firm-but-polite tenor of her voice. Even at the 2017 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute press preview, at an exhibition of her own work, Kawakubo did not speak. So imagine the surprise when she took to the stage at the Isamu Noguchi Museum last night for an unannounced conversation with the museum’s director, Brett Littman. Their talk followed the presentation of the Isamu Noguchi Award to Kawakubo. She is the first fashion designer (and easily the most internationally famous person) to receive the prize, an honor created in 2014 to recognize innovative artists following in Noguchi’s footsteps by bridging Eastern and Western cultures.

Just before Kawakubo began speaking, the audience was warned that even though she had consented to a public appearance, it would be happening only on her terms. “Excuse me.” A diligent attendant nodded at my phone screen, where a photograph of Kawakubo had lit up. “We’re asking for no photographs, please.” Except for the videographer beside me, I suppose.

Through her translator, Kawakubo fielded questions about the traits she shares with Noguchi, her Spring 1997 Lumps and Bumps collection and subsequent collaboration with Merce Cunningham, and the Met’s “Rei Kawakubo: Art of the In-Between” exhibition. She began, “I’m not an artist, and because of that I just wanted to say that it’s beyond my honor to receive this award, because I am not an artist. But I try, always, to come up with something new. Things that people have not seen, and I have gone this way for 50 years, and I’m very happy to be recognized for my achievement by receiving this award. Thank you.”

Afterwards, the small cluster of guests were shown a new Comme des Garçons film featuring the brand’s Fall 2019 men’s and women’s collections and were then ushered upstairs to consume artfully plated scallops and wine served in water glasses. Seated at tables with small white roses in ceramic vases was a mix of wealthy benefactors who bid on two Noguchi works for auction—this was, after all, a museum fundraiser—and Kawakubo followers and fans. The divide was sort of comical: the benefactors in Dries Van Noten and the fawning fangirls in CDG. A couple of people in Thom Browne made up a klatch of could-go-either-way guests.

Throughout the 154 minutes I spent hawk-eyed on Kawakubo, she remained, as always, respectful and reservedly talkative, speaking through her husband-translator Adrian Joffe. She wore all black, naturally, with her hair perfectly coiffed into a trapezoidal shape. She didn’t really smile or laugh, but paused for jokes just a couple of times with the Consulate General of Japan in New York and Littman. She mostly did not make eye contact, and she definitely didn’t want me to know that in an act of humanness and vanity, right before she took the stage to accept the prize, she mussed her bangs just so.

Eventually I was whisked over to meet Kawakubo and introduced as the reporter with whom she had answered a few email questions earlier in the day. She apologized, through Joffe, that her answers were so short, making the shape of a paragraph with her hand and then shrinking the distance between her forefinger and thumb to just centimeters, the length of a sentence. “It’s okay,” I said. “I expected them to be short.” She issued the tiniest smile, a pleasant nod, and then she turned away to her dinner. I went back to the real world, always a disappointment after you’ve been admitted, even in the most minute way, to the Rei one.

So, here’s what’s up with Rei Kawakubo, in three questions. Don’t be disheartened by her last answer; if her runway collections and the vibrant world she’s created at Dover Street Market are any indication, there are still plenty of secret things that keep her amused.

What parallels do you see between your work and Isamu Noguchi’s?

Maybe it’s the fact that we both, throughout our careers, were always looking for some new image.

What’s the point of fashion today?

I feel, right now, it’s not so interesting. The fashion world is inundated with the same old images everywhere, as this is the prevailing business model. In other words, it’s hard to find interesting, new things.

What excites you?

Recently, nothing.