Royalty feels a little fictional these days. Maybe that’s why Rei Kawakubo turned it into a fairytale for Comme des Garçons SS27.
Royalty and everyday life collide in a strange universe of giant crowns, enormous sculptural bodies, expanded denim, red ruffles and familiar fabrics pushed far beyond their usual proportions. Kawakubo’s only explanation was: “When royal life and everyday life become one.”
The first thing you notice is the scale.
Bodies become enormous. Hips expand sideways, shoulders turn into rounded structures, skirts become almost spherical and clothes seem to grow around the models rather than simply sit on them. On top of almost every look sits a white, handmade-looking crown, sometimes delicate and skeletal, sometimes so oversized it becomes almost ridiculous.
And somehow, it works.
The colour, pattern and texture selection keeps these completely exaggerated silhouettes from becoming visually exhausting. Deep navy denim, muted khaki, beige, red, gold, polka dots, stripes and flashes of brocade all sit together without making the collection feel chaotic. There is even something joyful about it.
Comme des Garçons SS27 feels like fashion remembered through a childhood imagination. Royalty, but the version you might have drawn as a kid.
There are no subtle little tiaras here. The crowns are huge. The dresses are huge. Everything has been pushed past the point of practicality and into something almost fictional.
WHEN EVERYDAY BECOMES ROYAL
What makes the collection more interesting is what these shapes are actually made from.
Alongside the ornate details are denim, cotton, canvas, ticking stripes, gingham and other everyday fabrics. Materials that normally belong to workwear or basic wardrobes are inflated into ceremonial silhouettes.
A giant denim skirt becomes almost a royal ball gown. A familiar pinstripe is blown up into something sculptural. Polka dots are gathered into enormous ruffles. Gold braiding and tassels appear inside these otherwise ordinary materials, almost like remnants of a palace trying to break through.
Kawakubo isn’t simply dressing people like royalty. She is asking what happens when the visual language of royalty gets mixed with the clothes of everyday life.
And the result is deliberately awkward.
A workwear fabric becomes aristocratic. A crown becomes homemade. A familiar dress becomes a giant object.
A FAIRYTALE WITH SOMETHING WRONG
The collection isn’t entirely sweet.
There is something slightly unsettling underneath all the colour and humour. Red fabric bursts through the navy denim in jagged openings, almost like something underneath the clothes is trying to escape. In another look, bright red ruffles and white structures surround the body like an exaggerated version of bones and flesh. Fake hair, feathers and tassels spill out from between the layers.
The silhouettes look almost alive.
That is what keeps Comme des Garçons SS27 from becoming a simple fantasy about princesses and kings. The clothes are too swollen, too strange, too physically demanding. The models sometimes look like they are carrying their own little kingdoms around with them.
And maybe that is the point, because is royalty still something we genuinely admire, or is it already a kind of fairytale?
Royal families still exist, obviously. But the fantasy around them feels increasingly disconnected from everyday life. We see royalty through screens, photographs, documentaries and endless pop-cultural references. At the same time, social media has created its own strange version of royalty, where anyone can construct an image of wealth, importance or power.
Kawakubo doesn’t give us an answer. She just makes the whole thing enormous.
WE’LL NEVER BE ROYALS
By the end, the crowns transform even more.
The collection moves towards denim again, with huge trousers, expanded shorts and exaggerated everyday silhouettes replacing the more ceremonial looks.
After all the crowns, brocade and oversized bodies, it feels almost funny.
Back to real life.
Except even the everyday clothes have been made enormous, so there is no real return to normal. Comme des Garçons SS27 leaves you somewhere between the palace and the street, between something that feels historically familiar and something that could only exist inside Kawakubo’s imagination.
Maybe royalty isn’t disappearing.
Maybe we just don’t believe in it the way we used to.
And for one season, Comme des Garçons made that uncertainty look like a fairytale.
