REI KAWAKUBO CALLED FOR A SHAMAN AND SENT DECONSTRUCTED SUITS INSTEAD

The show was held in a sweltering concrete space in Paris during Men's Fashion Week in June 2025. The show notes read: I had the feeling that we would really need to get someone powerful like a shaman to come back to lead us to peace, love and fraternity. Rei Kawakubo sent models in long braided wigs and oversized multi-brimmed newsboy caps wearing suits that were not suits down the runway to hypnotic chants and guttural hums. The collection is titled NOT SUITS, BUT SUITS. That is the entire creative brief. Kawakubo has been making collections for Comme des Garcons Homme Plus since 1984. She is 82 years old. She has not lost the instinct to find the phrase that makes fashion criticism pointless by anticipating it. ## Jackets That Peel Away at the Shoulder The tailoring in NOT SUITS, BUT SUITS is deconstructed in the specific sense: the garments reveal their own construction. Jackets have exaggerated, padded lapels that end in sculptural shapes. Sleeves detach at the shoulder in a way that is engineered, not accidental. Silhouettes are bulbous in sections and tapered in others, producing shapes that would take a pattern cutter three additional samples to achieve in conventional production. Trousers feature concealed zippers that allow them to expand into ruffled, skirt-like shapes when opened. This is not a theoretical disruption of tailoring. It is a production decision that required months of pattern iteration. The fabrics move away from corporate menswear entirely: vibrant candy-hued floral jacquards and geometric patterns replace the navy, charcoal, and mid-grey that have defined menswear for 400 years. Kawakubo is not borrowing from womenswear here. She is using tailoring as a framework and then asking what happens when every assumption inside that framework is reversed. ## The Shaman Framing Is Not Casual The show notes are worth reading as a document, not just as context. Kawakubo is describing a specific feeling about the current state of global politics and culture. She is not the first designer to express this sentiment: Virgil Abloh spoke about social exhaustion repeatedly in his work from 2019 to 2021. Rick Owens has been building protective architecture into his clothing since the early 2010s. Kawakubo's version is different because she is not building armor. She is building ritual costume. The shaman call is not a metaphor for protection. It is a metaphor for transformation. [The same tension between structure and disruption runs through the Wales Bonner x Y-3 Field Lizzard, which arrived in May 2026 as a three-way collaboration between Wales Bonner, Yohji Yamamoto, and adidas](/quick/wales-bonner-y3-adidas-first-collaboration-field-lizzard-tokyo-takashi-homma-may-2026-p5w8n3kt). That collaboration asks what Yamamoto's tailored minimalism looks like when Grace Wales Bonner applies her Caribbean-British academic lens. Kawakubo is asking a different question: what does a suit look like when the person wearing it is supposed to bring peace to the world? The answer is not straightforward. The clothes look difficult to wear and impossible to ignore. ## Hair, Sound, Light Hair and makeup by Takeo Arai. Head pieces by HIZUME. Music curation by ADC 303. Lighting by Thierry Dreyfus. Video by Titre Provisoire. Kawakubo lists these collaborators in every show note because they are not secondary to the collection. The show is the work. The clothes are one element of it. ADC 303 producing the sound design for a collection inspired by shamanic ritual is a production decision that connects the runway to a very specific lineage of Japanese electronic music and club culture. ## What Anti-Streetwear Actually Looks Like NOT SUITS, BUT SUITS is being read as an anti-streetwear statement because it is dressed formally and defiantly uncooperative. That reading is partially right. The collection is not interested in selling a mood. It is interested in manufacturing a confrontation between the viewer and the garment. A suit that unzips into a skirt is not comfortable menswear or comfortable womenswear. It is an object that refuses category. [The Drake and KD 19 campaign landed the same week with a completely different register: athletic endorsement culture deployed through comedy, glazing culture flipped into a $155 shoe campaign](/quick/nike-kd19-drake-glazing-campaign-june-17-k7m4r9xp). Two June 2026 fashion moments that could not be further apart in vocabulary. Both of them are interested in what happens when you remove the sincerity from the presentation. Kawakubo does it through ritual. Nike does it through irony. The market will decide which version sells in 2026. The SS26 collection is now in Comme des Garcons stores globally and available through select stockists. The clothes from NOT SUITS, BUT SUITS that survive into the secondary market will trade above retail within 18 months. The shaman has not arrived. But the collection might be the invitation.