On September 15, Octavius La Rosa, better known as dot COMME, the Melbourne-based collector of all things Comme des Garçons (5,000 pieces—and counting!) will sell, in conjunction with Kerry Taylor Auctions, some 265 pieces of his collection.
There will be iconic Comme (the lumps and bumps Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection of 1997, say, or 2005’s Broken Bride); rare Comme (a spring 1984 ‘bedsheet’-like dress, shown at a time when designer Rei Kawakubo had only really just started exhibiting her work in Paris, and one of La Rosa’s personal favorites); and bet-you-couldn’t-guess-this-was-Comme with Kawakubo’s early and rarely seen iterations of her label, which she founded in 1969. Back then it lived up to its name—like the boys—with oversized, masculine tailoring.
Fourteen lots date from pre-1980, with the earliest from 1975. There’s also Comme that’s not Comme at all, but the work of Junya Watanabe, Kawakubo’s fellow designer in the Comme des Garçons stable. Watanabe’s presence in the sale includes his radical revision of army fatigues from fall 2006, snaking and twisting them around the female form. Lastly, there are some 20 vintage menswear ensembles from Comme des Garçons; this news makes me a bit teary-eyed as I had some Comme from the late ’90s and early ’00s and darned if I know what happened to it.
For La Rosa, dot COMME: The Auction, is a reminder of Kawakubo’s exceptional and singular creativity, regardless of the era the piece comes from. “I really admire the courage to be always in search of the new,” he says. “It’s a testament to the brand that it can still have such reach and that it can still speak to a new audience today nearly 60 years since its inception.” La Rosa’s love of Comme des Garcons goes deep. “It was a driving factor in me wanting to pursue a career in clothing, beyond merely dressing up,” he says. “I remember the first time I viewed some of the old Comme collections around 2008 and they really changed my perception of fashion.”
