Rei
Kawakubo

Much like her “anti-fashion” collections, the furniture she designed to dress the brand’s boutiques between 1983 and 1993 also stands as a bold rebellion against established codes.
Through an obvious kinship of their radical worlds, Italian designer Paolo Pallucco published the first half of her production, with zinc-coated steel emerging as a clear favorite.

At first glance, the designer’s universe seems neither welcoming nor comfortable. No names are given to the objects — only numbers. Nevertheless, the chairs, tables, and screens designed by Rei Kawakubo can be seen as the continuation of a rigorous, sensitive, and poetic creative space, much like the work of Shiro Kuramata, a leading figure of postmodernism.

Rei Kawakubo’s creations destabilize, provoking both confusion and fascination.
Sublime geometries, vanished ornamentation: her seating designs stem from a minimalist Zen spirit and reject the functionalism of the original object.
It is not for any particular function that Rei Kawakubo creates. The designer frees herself from previously applied principles. Under the rule of style, she privileges form.

In the case of Chair No. 2 (1983), the viewer is confronted with the coldness of metal, stark simplicity, and visible weld marks. The seat, mischievously replaced by a steel mesh, seems to warn the would-be sitter: “You will find no comfort here.”
That same tension is present in Chair No. 8 (1987), made of satin stainless steel tubes, or in Chair No. 32 (1991), whose backrest consists of two thin metal chains — the damned’s shackles.
Rei Kawakubo’s “exquisite carcasses” would regain a touch of softness when she began covering them in linden wood around the 1990s. Before then, one observes, one questions, one reveres the enduring austerity of the furniture.
For those who approach it, the tension between art and design seems to gradually dissolve.