Which Japanese designer founded the avant-garde label Comme des Garçons?

Rei Kawakubo founded the Japanese avant-garde label Comme des Garçons.

Kawakubo began designing under the Comme des Garçons name in Tokyo in 1969 and incorporated the company in 1973. She had no formal fashion-design training; after studying art and literature at Keio University, she worked in advertising and then became a freelance stylist. Her independent perspective became central to the label’s identity.

Comme des Garçons became internationally prominent for challenging conventional ideas of beauty, tailoring, gender, and wearability. Its early collections were associated with black clothing, distressed fabrics, asymmetry, unfinished edges, and deconstructed silhouettes. These designs helped establish Kawakubo as a major figure in anti-fashion and experimental dress.

The label added menswear in 1978 and presented its first Paris show in 1981. Kawakubo is sometimes mixed up with fellow Japanese designers Kenzo Takada, Issey Miyake, or Yohji Yamamoto, but none of them founded Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo also founded the influential multi-brand retailer Dover Street Market.