Dress Becomes Body: Fashioning the Force of Form

Erin Manning (author)

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Title	Dress Becomes Body
Subtitle	Fashioning the Force of Form
Contributor	Erin Manning (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0098.1.19
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-funambulist-papers-vol-2/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	Manning, Erin
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2015-04-09
Long abstract	“Cut to invent anew,” proposes Rei Kawakubo, owner and designer of the fashion label Comme des Garçons. “Make an abstract image.” “Break the idea of clothes.”“Break the idea of clothes,” has been Kawakubo’s call for over 40 years, a call that has motivated the creation of some of the most intriguing clothing of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, opening up the field of fashion to an architectural potential perhaps unprecedented. With Kawakubo’s insistence that clothes are not a predetermined category, but a proposition according to which a body is invited to continuously reinvent itself, she has led the way toward a textile-based architecting of experience. In this regard, Kawakubo has pushed and continues to push the Spinozist mantra “we know not what a body can do” to its limit, recasting not only the realm of fashion but the way fashion situ-ates itself in relation to other practices, especially that of architecture.
Page range	pp. 148–172
Print length	25 pages
Language	English (Original)

Contributors

Erin Manning

(author)

Concordia University

“Cut to invent anew,” proposes Rei Kawakubo, owner and designer of the fashion label Comme des Garçons. “Make an abstract image.” “Break the idea of clothes.”“Break the idea of clothes,” has been Kawakubo’s call for over 40 years, a call that has motivated the creation of some of the most intriguing clothing of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, opening up the field of fashion to an architectural potential perhaps unprecedented. With Kawakubo’s insistence that clothes are not a predetermined category, but a proposition according to which a body is invited to continuously reinvent itself, she has led the way toward a textile-based architecting of experience. In this regard, Kawakubo has pushed and continues to push the Spinozist mantra “we know not what a body can do” to its limit, recasting not only the realm of fashion but the way fashion situ-ates itself in relation to other practices, especially that of architecture.