COMME des GARÇONS, long known for bending boundaries in both fashion and design, is reviving a set of Rei Kawakubo–designed chairs from the 1980s. Considered hard-to-find treasures by insiders, the pieces first appeared in 1983 and stayed in production for about ten years, then disappeared into the annals of the brand’s early archive.
The chairs themselves, with their skeletal, stripped-back structure, echo the same unflinching approach that has always defined Kawakubo’s work. The frames come in red, black, or silver versions, as well as a model with a wood seat, each suggesting a pause from ornament, a moment of stillness in an otherwise overflowing image landscape. Other Kawakubo furniture experiments of the era—once shown at Paris’s A1043 gallery in 2017 and later at Maniera’s exhibition at Collectible Brussels in 2018—took more tangled forms, all curves and twisted steel. These chairs, however, feel like the distillation of a shape, as simple as it gets.
Their return arrives as COMME des GARÇONS continues to reshape its universe, from experimenting with footwear collaborations—like its ongoing relationship with Nike—to expanding the conceptual territory at Dover Street Market. The chairs, historically elusive, will once again be available exclusively through COMME des GARÇONS Paris. For details, the brand advises reaching out to shop@comme-des-garcons.com.
