Legendary designer Rei Kawakubo is to be the subject of a solo exhibition next spring at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This will mark only the second time in the institution’s history that it is devoting an exhibition to a living fashion designer. The last one, a vast retrospective dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent organized by editor Diana Vreeland, opened in 1983.

The Japanese designer behind the Comme des Garçons label and Dover Street Market specialty stores, Kawakubo is a fashion maverick whose Paris collections are based on two-dimensional shapes, the color red and the “Ceremony of Separation,”.

Her fall collection was a take on “18th-century punk” employing couture floral fabrics and pink vinyl carved into armorlike, 3-D wonders.

“Kawakubo’s empire combines an industrially inspired socialist work ethic with a nearly fanatical desire to purvey clothing as an ever-changing product of its sociocultural environment, citing both neorealism and futurism in runway collections and advertising.”
-MET Museum website