Look Up.

Commes Des Garcon

“I just decided to make a company built around creation, and with creation as my sword, I could fight the battles I wanted to fight,”

Rei kawakubo of Comme des garcon ( translates as like the boys ) created her iconic fashion brand around an anger at the cooperate fashion industry which she believes ‘distorts creation’ and allows ‘uninteresting fashion to thrive’.

For more than four decades, she has continually upset the industry by challenging accepted standards of beauty. Among the many tipping points in her career was the bulbous, padded Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress collection of 1996: “Critics denounced the designs as ‘tumor’ dresses,” Vogue later observed, “but Kawakubo weathered the outrage, and her larger achievement—her avant-garde triumph—was that she gave people a chance to feel passionately about fashion.”

But her creation does not stop at clothes; she also has a perfume line. In keeping with the theme of the company, her perfumes are far from ordinary, with sour hints of burnt rubber, and flaming rock. She told Vogue in 1995 the perfume “is a gift to oneself, not something to appeal or attract the opposite sex.” This is something that is also obvious of her clothes- she says she designs for women ‘who are not swayed by what her husband thinks.” She is going against all the worst industry stereotypes of fashion, she does not create clothes which present woman ,or men for that matter, in a way society think they should look but instead in an expressive and beautifully creative manner.

Furthermore she challenges the way the consumers of the fashion world shop and buy their clothes. Her brand can often be found in unexpected and surprising venues, with pop up shops in offbeat locations away from traditional fashion capitals—an old bookstore in Berlin, for instance, and under a bridge in Warsaw, Poland.




Her designs are certainly passionate and have pushed the bounds of creation. She has constantly battled conformity and the way that designers would create clothes for what society thought people should look like; During the 1980s, Kawakubo’s inky, seemingly formless, garments stood in direct opposition to the bright, body-conscious clothing championed by the likes of Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana. Throwing political correctness to the wind, Montana once labeled Kawakubo’s controversial look “post-atomic.” She was also commonly insulted with the label “ragpicker”; and, in 1983, The Christian Science Monitor suggested that “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys) might more aptly be titled Comme des Clochards (Like the Tramps).” However the expression ‘no press is bad press’ is quite fitting as  Kawakubo later noted that she was thankful for this early aggression as it  was what put her fashion brand on the map.

  

And on the map she well and truly is, as many years on, she continues her battle against conformity and has established the brand as one of the most well respected in the industry. Rei has achievements have gone from strength to strength, from being rewarding an Excellence in Design Award from Harvard University to comparisons of her influence being made to the likes of Balenciaga and Coco Chanel. Not to mention the all time flattery in the form of an official nod from Disney as the 2004 film screen hit Incledibles featured a character named Edna “E” Mode who is said to be modeled after Kawakubo.

“When I began, I was fighting the resistance to change and fear of new things,” Kawakubo tells Vogue. “It was more about a personal struggle. But through the years it’s become more, bigger, wider. Now the fight is against the outside system.” Kawakubo is an amazing and passionate designer and one which I have a lot of respect for despite only becoming aware of her brand and its interesting story just months ago. I believe everything her and her brand stand for have a huge influence on the way consumers look at the fashion industry and the way the fashion industry operates. Whoever knew a brand from such a fickle seeming industry, as fashion could be so politically involved and outspoken?

Vogue predicted in 1987 that this designer of one-step-further fashion would be recognized “as the woman who will lead fashion into the twenty-first century.” And so she has.

Banksy thinks so too.

Turn off to turn on

Iconic landmarks and cities went dark for one hour on Saturday to showcase their commitment to protecting the planet for this year’s Earth Hour. Over 7,000 cities in 150 countries joined the movement with places like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Times Square in New York City, the Acropolis hill in Athens and even the Kremlin in Moscow participating. 

Perhaps durex has heard of the crisis in japan and started to fear for their business as they promote earth hour- a campaign to reconnect with your partner by disconnecting your devices.  The hashtag #turnofftoturnon explains it all really.

“Durex believes nothing should get in the way of great sex but our growing obsession with phones, laptops, TVs and Tablets isn’t bringing us closer together, it’s pushing us apart. So for us working with Earth hour is a perfect campaign fit to get across that message, let’s all turn off to turn on,” Ukonwa Ojo, global marketing manager at Durex said.

Even though its clearly in Durex interest that the nation keep up their sexual relations, their campaign is a sign that Japans population crisis perhaps isn’t just concentrated to japan.  

Japans population crisis

Japan, one of the worlds most technologically advanced and powerful nations is facing a serious population crisis : they now have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Without a dramatic change in either the birthrate or its restrictive immigration policies, Japan simply won't have enough workers to support its retirees, and will enter a demographic death spiral. In this day and age its so surprising to hear about a government in crisis over population decline, so used to hearing about the problems of overcrowding and the growing population elsewhere. So why are Japan falling fatal to such a bizarre issue?

One of the main reasons for such a dramatic decline in the birth rate is directly correlated to the decline in relationships and marriage in Japan. It seems the Japanese are becoming less and less interested in dating and building families. The Japanese government is having to take desperate measures to counteract this by funding matchmaking and dating services to get more young people married and producing babies. Local officials arrange “konkatsu” parties where singles can meet and mingle. I find it very alarming that such an influential nation has reached a state where they need guidance and lessons on how to go about the most basic and natural social interactions.

But even more alarmingly its not only the government who are running schemes to encourage the locals to interact with one another. After reading an interview with Aoyama, a Japanese woman who ‘teaches’ the reclusive locals how to deal with social interactions I started to understand the full extent of Japans social issues. Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiraling away from each other" and moving towards the usual technological suspects ‘There clearly is a subset of Japanese youth who have withdrawn from dating. Instead, they focus on online porn and games like Nintendo's Love Plus, in which players conduct a relationship with an anime girlfriend.’ She spoke about two 20 something girls she interviewed about their sexual/ social lives. ‘smart phones in hand, they admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh’.

And if they are not replacing their human relationships with cyber ones they're often opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes or on the more extreme hand, cutting themselves off from the world completely- ‘Hundreds of thousands of young men are known as hikikomori, shut-ins who have no human contact and spend their days playing video games and reading comics in their parents' homes’

She believes ‘it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." But she also believes that love and sex is very important part of society for more reasons than just the population crisis. Perhaps they need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan due to the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space and perhaps the rest of the world is not far behind.

Reading up about Japan’s population crisis has really scared me. It seems like an all too literal prediction of the future for other nations. As nations get up to speed with Japans technology will their birthrate too decline? I think Japan providing the world with a glimpse into all of our futures. Many of the shifts are occurring in other advanced nations too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all. Although other factors for example financial issues and such like are contributing, I do believe that it is mainly down to the effect of technology on japans youth. It is all starting to sound suspiciously like the maybe-not-so-scifi-after-all film ‘Her’ I went to see just weeks ago. Perhaps the films predictions are correct. Is our world going to be completely socially inept in a matter of years? Are the technological worlds we are all so caught up in disjointing us from the real and physical world that we live in?

The Generation Game

On Mothering Sunday me, my mum and my granny went out for lunch. Three generations all together I saw it as the perfect opportunity to bring up the discussion of the effect of ‘modern tech’ on how our world communicates.

My mum is addicted to her phone, and her ipad for that matter and is all for modern technology. She’s good at keeping in contact with loved ones and likes to creep on me and my sisters facebook activity now we’ve all moved away from home. ‘Especially with Nicola in Australia its fab to be able to Facetime and Skype to keep in touch’. Our family even have a clan Whatsapp which allows us to all keep uptodate with each others' activities on a daily basis. Although sometimes it’s hard to get mums attention because her eyes and fingers are glued to her phone...

(can’t say I’m not guilty of this too)

I think overall she uses technology in a positive way to keep in touch with the people who are most important to her.

 Now my granny being over 90 I’m sure you’d all guess what her response was- most likely beginning with a cliché ‘back in my day things were much easier…’ but what you’ll find surprising is how tech savvy my nearly 92 year old granny really is! Her actual response went like this ‘ och I couldn’t live without my mobby Hannah’.  My granny is a complete socialite and depends on her humble Nokia phone to get in touch with her pals to meet up for an Ashvale chippy or invite friends round for her homemade ‘Australia buns’ ( still not sure what an Australia bun actually involves). As she lives alone its great to keep her in contact with her many friends, as she explained how just the other day she sent her friend a text and the next minute she was knocking on her door! She however did explain she thinks there’s a time and a place for technology. ‘Now I don’t like seeing those mums on the phone with toddlers running wild around them’ and she ‘ canny abide folk yapping away on their phones on the bus’ .

 Wise words from granny Carnegie, I think her conclusion is completely valid. If it weren’t for technology my socialite granny would perhaps be living a much more lonely life and my mum wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with (creep on) her 3 beloved daughters. But granny Carnegie is right, there’s a time and a place for these things and we need to all understand those boundaries better. Technology can bring us together but once it has, part with your phone and connect with the people around you.