Comme des Garçons

Rei Kawakubo's fashion house in Tokyo, which with black, asymmetric and torn garments changed Western fashion in the 1980s.

Rei Kawakubo studied art and worked in advertising before she began making clothes under the name Comme des Garçons in Tokyo. The company was registered a few years later, and she showed her first collection in Paris in 1981.

Critics saw the black collections with holes and asymmetry as a reaction against the glamour of the 1980s. Kawakubo has also created shops and magazines as works of art, and Comme des Garçons has several lines, among them Play with the red heart.

Labels reading Comme des Garçons; the oldest are simple and text-based.

Deliberately unfinished seams, asymmetry and many layers in black.

• Fashion and accessories