Much like Rei Kawakubo, who launched Comme des Garçons in 1969, Elie continues to deconstructed the conventions of clothing in her own way. “[Rei] creates beauty within the deformities, and then she re-questions this beauty. She challenges beauty. She changes beauty,” says Elie, when prompted on her obsession in one of two short films featured in the exhibition. “The photographs and the two films in the exhibition are important to give the exhibition its vitality and also to explain who Michelle is and where she comes from,” adds Kupka.
For Kupka, Kawakubo’s most defining factor as a designer is that “She doesn’t design her pieces for eternity.” This idea of going against beauty standards — which Elie herself did not prescribe to in her early days as a model — is at the center of the exhibition, the title of which is a nod to Elie’s own personal motto. “Comme des Garçons is often judged by abstract artistic criteria,” says Kupka. “Whereas this show centres on the wearing, and the sentiments that Michelle wanted to express with the pieces herself. We are showing pieces that were selected by one person with the intention of being worn. Through Michelle, you can encounter pieces you would other wise only see the runway, in photographs, or in a museum, whilst grocery shopping in a supermarket in Cologne! Michelle makes it clear that [Kawakubo’s designs] are made to be worn and that theoretically everybody could do the same. There is also a certain demystification at play, but at the same time Michelle creates a new myth; she appropriates the pieces and works with them.”
By focusing on a living collector, Elie’s show takes an assuredly unconventional approach to the fashion exhibition. Recounting more than the story of these subversive clothes, this collaborative project sees Elie tell her own passionate stories, all the while advocating a message of positivity, inclusivity and self worth.
“Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Michelle Elie wears Comme des Garçons” runs until August 30th, 2020, at the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt.
Photography by Nick Leuze
Words by Maxime der Nahabédian & Dan Thawley
www.museumangewandtekunst.de