Comme des Garcons advertisements from 80's to 00's

Comme des Garcons is known for its modern, eccentric, and avant-garde style. Their advertisements are also known for being artsy and avant-garde. I looked into the history of advertisements of Comme des Garcons and compared and contrasted their campaigns from 1980s to 2010.

Everyone considers Comme des Garcons’ advertisements to be weird and artsy. Comme des Garcons campaign is a good example of “out of convention fashion photography.” However, they were not so different and out of convention when Rei Kawakubo, their head designer, first came to Paris in 1981.

(Top: 1981 Chanel Ad. Below: 1981 Comme des Garcons Ad.)

As one can see, there are no distinct difference between Campaigns of Chanel and Comme des Garcon from 1981. But as the brand became more notable, they took bold moves; they stoped following the rule of fashion photography, and started to create ads that look rather random and obcutre. If a person who do not know what Comme des Garcons see these ads, he or she would be rather confused. According to Robert Goldman in the article “This is not an Ad,” these advertisements can be classified as ‘avant-garde non-ads.’

Comme des Garcons advertisements seem to have stayed the same, but their advertisement style has evolved over time. In 2000, their style have become even more abstract and conceptual. In the late 80’s, they still showed people in their ads; now, they started to feature random objects. Some of these ads even look like some sort of contemporary art pieces. This style of ad helps them maintaining their brand image of new, different, artsy, avant-garde.