In the 1990s, a distinct shift in fashion emerged, as designers began to critique and reject the excesses of the 1980s. Gone was the obsession with sculpted bodies and high-gloss glamour; instead, a new wave of avant-garde fashion focused on breaking conventions and redefining beauty.
Rei Kawakubo was at the forefront of this movement, challenging traditional perceptions of the body and its relationship to clothing. Her Spring/Summer 1997 collection, Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, often remembered as the "lumps and bumps" collection, tackled these ideas head-on.
While Milan was abuzz with Tom Ford's sultry, logo-heavy designs for Gucci, featuring supermodels in barely-there ensembles drenched in amber light, Kawakubo took a radically different approach. Instead of glorifying conventional beauty ideals, she chose to satirize them. Her designs featured unconventional silhouettes, including garments lined with kidney-shaped down pillows sewn into the fabric, creating unusual, protruding shapes. This collection pushed the boundaries of what we think of as the female form, reimagining everything from cleavage-enhancing bras to the maternal figure, exaggerating curves in ways never seen before. In Rei Kawakubo’s world, clothing didn’t just follow the body’s shape—it reshaped the body entirely.
Six Magazine, 1997Photography Kishin Shinoyama, Art Direction Tsuguya Inoue
Rei Kawakubo’s groundbreaking approach in the 1997 Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection continues to influence contemporary fashion in several powerful ways. Her rejection of traditional beauty standards and the way she redefined the relationship between body and clothing has opened up new creative possibilities for designers today.
First, Kawakubo’s work encourages the deconstruction of conventional silhouettes. Today, we see more designers experimenting with exaggerated, unconventional shapes and forms, embracing asymmetry, volume, and deformed structures as a way to challenge idealized beauty norms. This focus on reshaping garments rather than simply following the body's natural lines has sparked a broader movement toward fashion that values creative expression over conformity to traditional body shapes.
Additionally, her critique of the hyper-glamorous, hyper-sexualized fashion of the '80s and '90s resonates with the growing trend of body positivity and inclusivity. Designers now regularly create collections that embrace diversity in body types, not just in terms of size, but also in how clothing interacts with the body. More brands are moving towards collections that prioritise comfort, practicality, and a deeper sense of individuality, rather than simply flattering or enhancing the body's natural curves.
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