Sophia called this “genius” in that loud voice she uses when she really really likes something. So it must have been good. It WAS good. More than good. It was amazing. Often there’s this misapprehension that Rei’s a bit serious – and it’s true, she does make clothes that make you think. But there’s an opposite side to her – this undercurrent of strange, cartoonish humour – and today she used that to throw a party. So, what are Rei’s boys wearing to let their (heavily gelled) hair down? Well, I want to say that thing about not being able to polish a turd but you are able to throw glitter on it, which is obviously mostly irrelevant here, as Comme couldn’t be further from a turd, and definitely doesn’t need polishing, but because the saying attests to the transformative power of glitter.
In this case, that glitter came through in sequins. Shiny shiny sequins. They ran throughout, starting on brilliant wide-leg shorts, and then in slices across the collection, running down sheer white shirts or across the shoulder of a blazer. Brilliant too were the slices of lurid animal print – part soft toy, part Flintstones – that also appeared patchworked across the collection. And, on the subject of toys, there was something childlike to it – shirts covered in these tiny disks that looked like Smarties, patches rainbow lurex or those incredible pieces of broken-up doll that stretched across the final blazers. It ended with the models dancing, part children’s party, part rave. Which was brill. To reiterate, as Sophia will be – to taxi driver, waiter, person on the street etc. etc. – it was G-E-N-I-U-S.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
