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“Ms. Kawakubo is a legend in the world of fashion, and the exhibition is a ratification of her unique stature,” said The New York Times of “Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between”. The highly praised show was launched during the annual Met Gala in New York on Monday, May 1.

“The Met Gala is, from a celeb-gazing and fashion standpoint, the Super Bowl and Oscars all rolled up into one: everyone is there, and everyone is going for it,” noted Vanity Fair of the big night. Among the ladies to take the red carpet were Rihanna in Comme des Garçons, Solange Knowles in Thom Browne, Cara Delevigne in Chanel, Lily Rose Depp in Chanel, Zoe Kravitz in Oscar de la Renta and Katy Perry in Maison Margiela.

“Anticipation was high for Rihanna’s look, particularly given the night’s avant-garde dress code, and she did not disappoint,” commented Vogue. Rihanna wore a Comme des Garçons dress from the house’s fall 2016 runway collection. The sculptural piece consisted of floral fabrics layered and pulled apart like petals.

The exhibition, which runs until September 4, features some 150 examples of Kawakubo’s womenswear for Comme des Garçons, dating from the early 1980s to her most recent collection. The pieces illustrate the evolution of the designer’s revolutionary experiments in fashion. Following Yves Saint Laurent in 1983, Kawakubo is the second living designer to have been given a monograph show at Met Fifth Avenue.

“Since 1981, when she first showed her work in Paris - shocking early collections in which the clothing looked whipped, ravaged, as if deconstructed by a tornado - Ms. Kawakubo’s explorations into the unknown and the untried have baffled and bullied the fashion establishment as frequently as they have bowled it over,” wrote Laura Jacobs in The Wall Street Journal.