The Shoulder Pads of a Generation Lost in Transmission – Comme des Garçons and the Echoes of Avant-Garde Armor
The Shoulder Pads of a Generation Lost in Transmission – Comme des Garçons and the Echoes of Avant-Garde Armor
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In the ever-evolving theater of fashion, where trends flare up and die like supernovas, there exists a parallel world—a slow-burning resistance that operates not with explosions of color or the ease of wearable silhouettes, but with defiance, distortion, and deconstruction. Comme Des Garcons Within this world, Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons reigns as a matriarchal force, warping our ideas of beauty and normalcy since the early 1980s. Among her many tools of disruption, one visual symbol continues to haunt the archives and runways alike: the shoulder pad.
This exaggerated, architectural structure has returned time and time again, not as a relic of 1980s power-dressing but as an evolving emblem of what it means to carry identity, gender, power, and resistance. Comme des Garçons didn’t invent the shoulder pad, but Kawakubo weaponized it—stripping it of corporate conformity and turning it into sculptural protest. This essay explores how the shoulder pad, particularly within the Comme des Garçons universe, represents a generation caught in the static—lost in transmission, overwhelmed by expectation, and desperately seeking form in the formless.
Avant-Garde as Armor
For Rei Kawakubo, clothing has never simply been about dress. Her garments often resemble architectural blueprints, post-structuralist essays, or psychological diagrams rather than functional fashion. She resists language, often refusing to explain her collections, preferring silence or ambiguity over precision. And yet, within that silence, the shoulder pad roars.
In Western fashion history, the shoulder pad has carried numerous connotations: militarism, masculinity, 1980s corporate feminism, and even theatrical parody. Kawakubo repositions it not as an accessory to fit trends but as an extension of the body’s mutiny. Her shoulder pads are not there to “balance” a silhouette or empower a working woman—they protrude, they swell, they deform. They suggest trauma, protection, repression, transformation. They imply that to be seen, the body must first be distorted.
In the iconic 1997 collection "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body," known colloquially as the “Lumps and Bumps” collection, Kawakubo challenged the romantic symmetry of the female form. Padding was placed in unexpected areas—shoulders, hips, torsos—to create alien silhouettes. These were not clothes that celebrated the body, but clothes that questioned the very need for it to be celebrated. The shoulder became a site of experimentation, a protrusion rather than an anchor, an asymmetrical spike rather than a symmetrical structure. Kawakubo was rejecting beauty—and by doing so, articulating something painfully modern: a disconnection between self and society.
The Power of Distortion
What makes Comme des Garçons’ shoulder pads radically different from their 1980s counterparts is their intent. In the Reagan-Thatcher era, shoulder pads represented the aggressive absorption of masculine power by women entering the corporate world. It was an act of conformity masked as rebellion. But in Kawakubo’s hands, they are no longer tools for assimilation—they are obstacles, exaggerations, refusals.
These shoulders do not say “Take me seriously in your boardroom.” They scream, “I do not belong in your architecture.” They reject proportion, linear time, and the conventional idea of fashion as flattery. Her shoulder pads often make the wearer less “attractive” by traditional standards—broader, stranger, less human. They reference body armor, insect shells, dystopian cyborgs. If 1980s shoulder pads were about making women look like men to gain power, Kawakubo’s are about rejecting that binary altogether. There is no gender here, only form and unform. The human silhouette becomes a battleground.
A Generation Disconnected
The phrase “a generation lost in transmission” evokes a feeling of static, of broken signals and unresolved frequencies. It captures the emotional state of millennials and Gen Z, struggling to navigate a world that has overpromised and underdelivered. In this context, the distorted silhouette becomes metaphor: the generation that Kawakubo designs for isn’t one looking for validation in fashion—it’s one seeking to disappear into it, to reconstruct itself from the scraps of failed utopias.
Comme des Garçons’ shoulder pads act as analog resistance in a digital age. They speak to a yearning for physicality in a world increasingly defined by screens and illusions. The shoulders are not ergonomic—they do not fit neatly into chairs, car seats, or subway spaces. They demand room. They cause discomfort. They assert presence. But paradoxically, they also express isolation. They are barriers as much as beacons.
Kawakubo’s aesthetic aligns with this fragmented identity. The shoulders do not match each other. The materials are often frayed, matte, rough—anti-Instagram in every possible way. They are made to be seen in person, to be felt, to interrupt. They are not digital-native fashion but analog ghosts, glitching through the soft, saccharine codes of contemporary style.
Fashion as Fragmentation
In Comme des Garçons’ universe, the shoulder is not just a part of the body—it’s a metaphor for the burdens it carries. Think of the common phrases: “to shoulder responsibility,” “a chip on one’s shoulder,” “cold shoulder.” These idioms speak to emotional and psychological weight, often unseen. Kawakubo makes that weight visible, literal. Her garments don't soothe—they expose. They drag the inner world outwards, pinning it onto the body like emotional origami.
These shoulder pads echo the architecture of anxiety. They often skew the body so far from traditional proportion that it’s hard to imagine the person inside. And yet, that is the point. The person inside is fragmented, unsure, half-present. Lost in transmission. The body becomes a broadcast signal no longer being received.
This dislocation is not just visual—it’s existential. Kawakubo’s work challenges the very idea that we need to be interpreted, understood, or aesthetically pleasing. In a culture obsessed with “relatability,” her work is defiantly alien. It’s not that she’s anti-fashion—she’s fashion after the fall, fashion as philosophical ruin.
Conclusion: Shoulder to Shoulder with Ghosts
To wear Comme des Garçons is not to wear clothes in the traditional sense—it’s to wear a question, a rupture, a ghost. The shoulder pads—enlarged, mutated, surreal—are not nostalgic winks to past eras. They are warnings and whispers from a possible future where identity is layered, painful, and gloriously incoherent.
In a world seeking smooth, curated aesthetics and marketable personalities, Kawakubo continues to defy readability. Her shoulder pads resist easy interpretation, and that’s exactly what makes them matter. Comme Des Garcons Long Sleeve They are for those who do not fit, who do not want to fit, who understand that fashion is not just about being seen—it’s about refusing to be absorbed.
So when we speak of “a generation lost in transmission,” perhaps we are not mourning a loss. Perhaps we are witnessing a new language forming—wordless, sharp-shouldered, and quietly radical.
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