Given fashion's cyclical nature, you can almost predict what a designer will send down the runway each season. From McQueen and Galliano you expect drama, nothing short of a performance, complete with pieces that wouldn't look out of place in a museum. For Donatella Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, it's about sex and using it to empower women, while people such as Nicolas Ghesquiere, at Balenciaga, are always looking forward by creating something modern from the past.
Rei Kawakubo, however, is different. Attending one of her shows is a bit like going on a blind date; it's almost always surprising. From her first show in Paris, in 1981, where she shocked editors with her haphazard silhouettes and all-black palette, to her most recent collection, dedicated to 'bad taste', with trashy 1950s net petticoats and puffballs of tulle, Kawakubo, the founder of Comme des Garcons, is 'beyond' fashion. In fact, you could say she is fashion, with an influence that extends to almost every other designer.
'Everyone is influenced by Comme des Garcons,' Marc Jacobs told Women's Wear Daily recently. 'Anybody who is aware of what life is in a contemporary world is influenced [by the brand].'
Kawakubo is as elusive as she is talented. She rarely gives interviews and, if she does, journalists find it hard to break through her stony exterior and decipher her short answers.
'She simply has always preferred that her work does the talking,' says her husband and the president of Comme des Garcons International, Adrian Joffe, by way of explanation. 'Comme des Garcons is not about personality.'
We meet in a little, dark cafe in Beijing's 798 art zone, which has been booked by the Comme des Garcons team for a private event. The designer is huddled in a corner with her communications team, deep in conversation. She stands up and greets me with a polite nod, her blunt black bob framing her face. She is reminiscent of Edna Mode, the pint-sized, super-talented costume designer in animated film The Incredibles, minus the flamboyance and 'dahlings'. She is wearing a striped blue shirt, cropped black harem pants and a larger-than-life scarf wound around her neck.