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Date: 2017-05-01

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Arriving in a brilliant white space containing a series of geometric structures, you'll find no one pointing you in the right direction, and no explanatory text next to the garments. That's because for Kawakubo, the revered Japanese designer who's been reinventing her clothes for nearly a half-century — to the point that she no longer calls them clothes, but "objects for the body" — there ts 
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Rei Kawakubo, visionary of fashion, honored at new Met show
Jocelyn Noveck, Ap National Writer Updated 3:20 pm, Monday, May 1, 2017
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This photo shows part of the exhibit from "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons Art on the In-Between" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, May 1, 2017. The exhibit, which begins with the glitzy Met gala and then opens to the public May 4, is situated in a blinding white space, where visitors are encouraged to follow their own route around a series of geometric structures showing highlights of Kawakubo’s work. Photo: Shelley Acoca, AP / AP
 
 
 
 
 
Photo: Shelley Acoca, AP
IMAGE 1 OF 2 This photo shows part of the exhibit from "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons Art on the In-Between" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, May 1, 2017. The exhibit, which begins with the glitzy ... more

NEW YORK (AP) — If you're someone who likes a lot of guidance and explanation at the museum, you might want to dramatically recalibrate your expectations before heading into "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between," the lavishly presented new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
Arriving in a brilliant white space containing a series of geometric structures, you'll find no one pointing you in the right direction, and no explanatory text next to the garments. That's because for Kawakubo, the revered Japanese designer who's been reinventing her clothes for nearly a half-century — to the point that she no longer calls them clothes, but "objects for the body" — there is no right answer.
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"I don't like to explain the clothes," the Comme des Garcons founder, now 74, was quoted as saying in 2013. "The clothes are just as you see them and feel them."
There is a bit of guidance available. Andrew Bolton, star curator of this and other blockbuster Met fashion exhibits, has provided paper brochures with maps and context, though he cheerfully welcomes you to ditch them. And even this much explanation for the visitor was a hard-fought compromise with Kawakubo.
"It was a battle," Kawakubo says in an interview with Bolton. "Are you going to write that we fought?"
They seem to have fought over various things. Showing a reporter around the exhibit a few days before opening, Bolton noted that although Kawakubo approached him 18 months ago saying she was ready for a show, she was resolutely opposed to a retrospective. She hates focusing on the past, because she has moved on.
"She finds it physically painful to look at her work. So, that took months of negotiation," he said.
Fans of "Comme," as fashion-lovers call it, would have been "screaming in my ears," Bolton added, if he hadn't included collections like "Broken Bride," where Kawakubo explored the concept of marriage, and "Ballerina Motorbike," in which she juxtaposed the very feminine — a filmy pink tutu — with the tough, muscular look of a black motorcycle jacket.
Kawakubo actually wanted to focus exclusively on the last few years of designs — following her second "rupture" in 2014, when she said she was no longer making "clothing" in the sense of wearable garments. (Her first rupture, in 1979, is known as the moment she decided to ditch her early, folklore-inflected designs and "start from zero.") "This was where her mind was at," Bolton said. He convinced her otherwise, and sprinkled through the show are juxtapositions of the older, more functional clothes, and the new.