Comme des Garcons

Rei Kawakubo, a former advertising stylist with no formal fashion training, founded Comme des Garçons in Tokyo in 1969 and incorporated it in 1973. Her early Paris collections, black, torn and asymmetric, were dubbed 'Hiroshima chic' by the press and changed what fashion could be, and she has kept provoking since, from the padded 'lumps and bumps' of 1997 to the Dover Street Market stores she created with her husband, Adrian Joffe, in 2004. The company and its many lines remain independent.