IVO MILAN – Radical Fashion Blog

”After the dust” as Rei Kawakubo titles the 2026 Spring/Summer collection.

An almost prescient expression for the history of the store. After years of dusty absence caused by the closure in 2020, the most representative line of the Japanese Maison finally comes ‘back home’: Comme des Garçons.

In so far as ‘Comme-Comme‘ isn’t hierarchically inferior to its originator Comme des Garçons, it’s however with this line that the designer puts her own seasonal meta-narrations on stage.

The shows of Rei Kawakubo are textile manifestations of prospectives and aesthetic interpretations of our time, they convey a message beyond the form of a simple piece of clothing.

As GiltMagazine writes:

There’s a different kind of silence during Comme des Garçons’ shows. Not one of expectation, but one of thought that prepares to be shaken.

Convinced advocate of a type of clothing which, in its creative potential, becomes medium of content beyond fashion, Rei Kawakubo challenges the critical sense of the public installing narrative cues between folds and cuts, overlaps, contrasts and textile provocations, formal and chromatic.

The models don’t wear clothing, but complex structures, with head-dresses and costumes evocative of cultures and impressions far away from the ordinary everyday life, almost shamanic.

The sound track is an integral part of an atmosphere which suggests the plot of the seasonal work.

The guttural vocalisms of the Spanish singer Fatima Miranda, Desosasiego (translated as: restlessness) don’t mark the rhythm of the exits, but mainly the connections of sense and possible meanings.

With a post show statement, the designer provides a precious clue:

I believe in positivity and in the value which can be born from the damaging of perfect things.

An optimistic note, manifestly hovering on the concentrated and amused faces of the spectators, a critical and alternative prospective, an act of rebellion and a hope beyond every space-time conjunction of monotony and dull resignation.

Our seasonal sales continue and, especially in lighter weights, they become ideal for a period of milder and welcoming temperatures.

As the video displays, in the show-room the language subsides to viable and easily wearable suggestions, Comme des Garçons style.

When presenting a collection, the context from which it draws inspiration, the atmosphere and local culture that shape its identity, are often overlooked. In a way, getting to know a designer, a company or a brand has a lot to do with geography.

While globalization tends to erase local distinctiveness, homogenizing knowledge, tastes and preferences, there are, in parallel, realities that quietly resists, capable of synthesizing the modernity of contemporary metropolises with the ancient wisdom of remote lands, where customs and traditions express a deep connection and respectful balance between humans and nature.

This is clearly the case with Bergfabel, a South Tyrol brand whose name combines the German word ‘Berg’ (mountain) and ‘Fabel’ (folk tale), a language still deeply rooted in Vipiteno, a small village nestled in the South Tyrolean Alps on the border with Austria, where Klaus Plank, the brand’s designer, was born.

Alpine landscapes, towering mountains and long green valleys, pastures and flowers bordered by coniferous forests, speak to the long human adaptation to the harshness of cold winters and the gentleness of spring.

It’s an aesthetic harmony, a mutual, happy anthropization that is easily found in Bergfabel’s garments: in the color palette that follows the seasonal rhythm, in the preference for natural fibers, rustic wools, and liven-in-looking cottons, and in the traces of South Tyrolean folklore visible in certain garments and jackets, in the cuts and hand-finished details.

The more traditional aspects are softened by the big textile research carried out by Klaus and his wife Barbara, and by their skill in creating silhouettes that – through carefully placed formal gestures such as pleats between slits, sleeve hems, and borders – are ideal for more international contexts, made for travel and for feeling at ease, anytime and anywhere

Because the underlying idea behind Bergfabel’s stylistic approach is not only to keep the connection with its native land alive, but above all, to offer it in its essence, an habitat that brings pleasure and comfort to the wearer, just like immersing oneself in the landscapes of the high Tyrolean valleys.