Black Hole, Bright Future

Black Hole is the title of CDG Homme Plus’ FW26 collection, but we’ll get to the astrophysics later. First things first: before the clothes or the theory even register, the masks do: in-your-face hockey masks that conjure a lineage of pop-cultural menace—Jason Voorhees, Hannibal Lecter, even Mexican luchadores. The masks all share a duality, straddling the worlds of sport and horror theatrics.

That contradiction was sharpened more as slogans declared “LIVE FREE” yet the faces beneath were bound, muzzled, quite literally jailed. The clothes, based on formal tailoring, suiting, uniforms, are warped and distorted (in obvious Comme des Garçons fashion), as if pulled by unseen gravitational forces. A standout look was a grey zip-front jumpsuit with legs like tobizubon (traditional Japanese worker trousers ballooned to the knee before tapering into cigarette-slim hems—for anyone who hasn’t spent the past year planning outfits for a Japan trip). Season after season, Rei Kawakubo bends fashion to her hands, her own gravity, if you will – cropping jackets in the most inconvenient places possible, folding garments inward, making wearable wormholes.

Kawakubo titled the collection Black Hole, referring to a recent theory proposed by UK physicists suggesting that our universe may not have emerged from a singular, almost genesis-adjacent Big Bang, but from within a black hole. Which is to say: everything is happening all the time, everywhere. The theory trades the romance of a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic miracle for something colder, more cyclical and nihilistic.

On one hand, the idea is humbling. Our existence, or how we knew it, was based on a cosmic-meant-to-be, but with this theory it seems more like cosmic-happens-all-the-time. Another universe just dropped? Business as usual. Galactic shrug! You’re just the product of interstellar routine and so is everyone and everything else! Is this the horror Kawakubo is bracing her models for, masking up against? If we stare into the void too much, will our hair go Einstein-frizzy like that of the models? 

Or should the new findings make us optimistic? In the final moments of the show, white emerges like light at the end of the tunnel. Looks blooming with ruches, ruffles, and tactile, furry textures soften the severity that came before. Perhaps she sees it as an escape of our current (grim-looking) world. If the universe is not singular, then neither are its possibilities. Maybe we should stop staring at ourselves like the center of the universe. Who says the void can’t be fun? Other worlds? Let’s hope someone packed a lunch.

For now, it still stands – there may be infinite universes being created out there, but there is only one Rei Kawakubo.