>> Google the artist Dan Michiels and you're unlikely to come up with much, save for a profile page on Creativity Explored, the website of an organisation in San Francisco that works and aids artists with developmental disabilities. That may change though now that Comme des Garcons debuted six stunning silhouettes at the end of the A/W 13-4 show on Saturday, where Michiels' work was reinterpreted as prints. This rigorous excercise in the "infinity of tailoring" as Rei Kawakubo called it, first employed all of the sobre City Boy suit fabrics you could think of but right at the end, just as we were reconciled with the fact that this was a beautiful and magnificently stark feminine/masculine interplay, there was further joy to be found when Michiels' prints came down the runway.
Michiels creates psychedelic patterns worked out with a ruler, grid-esque lines and an array of felt tip pens (I notice we share a similar nervous tick about not having the same colour touch each other in the geometric patterns) to create tessellated tile patterns. It looks like a laborious process but the results are instantly explosive and joyful and combined with Kawakubo's generous in-built rosettes, folds, pleats and bunching up of fabric in these deliciously tactile suits, it makes for a delectable visual feast. One we were only to happy to see as the runway was literally about 50cm wide max, bringing we, the audience closer into these kaleidoscopic crazy swirls. Trust Kawakubo to find an "outsider" artist to bring us right into her world.
