The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
