Garcons Velvet Corduroy

Comme des Garçons is one of the world’s most innovative and trailblazing fashion brands, helmed by its inimitable founder, Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942), who has a penchant for breaking fashion and cultural norms. The only living designer apart from Yves Saint Laurent to have a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, Kawakubo has permanently changed fashion with designs that challenge traditional ideas of beauty with a creative and transgressive exuberance.

After studying art and literature at Keio University in Tokyo, Kawakubo worked as a freelance stylist before establishing her own label in 1969. Comme des Garçons — which is also known as CDG — officially launched in 1973, and Kawakubo opened her first store in Tokyo three years later. She has since been instrumental in pioneering many concepts now familiar in contemporary fashion.

One of Kawakubo's most iconic moves was her introduction of androgynous styles (Comme des Garçons means “like the boys” in French) with asymmetrical, twisted silhouettes that envelope the body. While she told the New York Times that the “basics of clothing lie in men’s fashion,” Kawakubo believes in the concept of humanness in clothes (she titled her spring 1995 show “Transcending Gender”).

In the 1970s, when color-blocking was the norm, Kawakubo stuck to her monochromatic color palette dominated by shades of black with uncompromising dedication, although with evocative and powerful use of red and white.

Comme des Garçons is also known for an often shocking take on fashion. Deconstructed tailoring, violently slashed fabric and sculptural shapes are some themes that run through the brand’s collections, but Kawakubo never explains the meaning of her conceptual pieces, which fall somewhere between art and fashion.

Designer Junya Watanabe, who worked alongside Kawakubo for nearly a decade, operates an atelier based within the Tokyo headquarters of Comme des Garçons, and he established a line under Kawakubo's label in the early 1990s. Since then, even though the brand has launched additional lines and more commercial offshoots like PLAY, known by the iconic heart motif with eyes, the premier men’s line Homme Plus and the multilabel Dover Street Market that opened in 2004, the essence of Comme des Garçons remains Kawakubo’s otherworldly and undefinable creations, which are impossible to ignore.

Find vintage Comme des Garçons shirts, jackets, day dresses and other clothing on 1stDibs.

No matter if you’re preparing for a fashion event or a weather event — you’re going to need a good jacket.

What would become the modern jacket as we know it began as a strictly professional item. A lot of the vintage and designer jackets (and coat styles such as the Navy-inspired peacoat) in our closets were likely popularized by soldiers who battled aggressive climes with their regulation field jackets, bombers and parkas buttoned or zipped to the chin. Indeed, keeping troopers comfortable guided the design of the military surplus garments that have often become buzzy fashion trends. But now, jackets add far more than warmth to our wardrobe, and we hunt down outer layers branded with peerless fashion labels.

Fashion’s most iconic creations, despite their age, remain modern: Biker jackets originated in the 1920s, Balenciaga’s celebrated puffers are steeped in a tradition of down coats that began in the 1930s and your vintage denim jacket has come an even longer way, from California Gold Rush to wardrobe staple. Jeans bequeathed jean jackets during the 1880s, thanks to Levi Strauss, who crafted the former as a durable garment to be worn by miners and railroad workers. Later, jeans and jean jackets became synonymous with nonconformity and rebelliousness — with fashion legends such as actor James Dean in the 1950s and model Veruschka in the 1960s and ’70s leading the indigo-toned charge.

Another fashion rebel, Coco Chanel, used the classic tweed jacket to introduce more comfort and mobility into women’s daily lives. Debuting in 1954 and based on a cardigan, the groundbreaking Chanel jacket forever changed what women wear. The garment reacted against the fitted, constricting styles of Christian Dior’s New Look, which, as Chanel saw it, was making women dress like decorative objects.

On 1stDibs, find bold collections from cutting-edge contemporary designers who’ve taken the classic silhouette of the jacket to new heights or build out your array of vintage treasures (denim or otherwise) with dazzlers from Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Moschino and more.