The layering of textured sensation at Comme des Garçons | Dover Street Market | NYC
In one’s career, there are intersections,
points at which you make a crossroads crossing —
you come into the intersection going one way, and you leave that, as crossing guard,
transecting into a new path.
Crossroads are full of magic.
Worlds churn there, and yes,
while there is this street and that street,
surely there are more roads coming to this nexus than you might know.
And if you live in that matrix of roads, knots, unknowing, uncertainty and risk — it will never be easy,
like a swarm of snakes,
there will be interlacement.
There are points by which the sheer tenacity,
the passionate fury is so anvil-tempered and roiling with heat that you wonder —
“how has this person stayed on fire for so long?”
Rei Kawakubo might be one of those
impassioned flame-throwers,
who’s perpetually on the edge of
a newly-tipped point of wisdom, a new quiet insight,
that she rips all wide open in the risk for.
Some might simply say —
“she knows where she’s going
and she’s just going there.”
I’ve always been looking at, and for, people
of that molded, hot-poured crucible.
Life for them is never easy,
and it’s not sup-posed to be, either.
As a journeyer, it’s what you’ve seen, where you have been,
and who you have met that tells the tale
of living well, deeply, widely and wisely.
Some might comment — really, has Rei Kawakubo been so wise?
She’s been described as a perpetual apple cart spiller.
With what others have so neatly arranged in their retail retellings,
Kawakubo-san simply upsets, spills and finds
a new arrangement in the spilled raiment of goods strewn wide and wild.
Kawakubo | Irving Penn 1993
What that
boasts
is joy.
Joy
in
the celebration
of experience.
Joy in sharing — it’s never “humdrum, get it done.”
It’s more — “how could we do something really magical, and create a village of cobbled-together micro stores, like some caravanserai of the imagination — fun, child-like, revolutionary and rebellious.
Interesting to categorize a 71-[2014]-year- old woman as rambunctious.
But it works.
I went to her new installation in NYC.
And walked and
shot the floors.
What I found was a riot of color, texture, amazement and whimsical amusement.
My first thought —
“someone loved this place.”
And made this place, with
love,
care,
attention
and intention.
There, she’s taken over a whole building,
all seven floors a
celebration of her
curious and collective mind.
Imagery, here.
Right here,
30th & Lexington
Invent upon it,
as you will.
A journey worth taking,
a procession from the street to the imaginings of
the marvelous — knit-wrung pillars, scrap heaps of assemblage, a melange of invention, play and exploration.
A delight — along with food on the main floor.
Truly a sensational design program, all senses — noted and examined,
savored and flourishing in a riot of materials.
Our explorations of her work,
a journey years in our making,
can be found, here.
TIM | GIRVIN NYC
…..
THE STRATEGY OF IMAGINATION +
EXPERIENCE = PLACE
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS:
PLACES | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS | SPAS + WELLNESS CENTERS