Rei Kawakubo (born 1942, Tokyo, Japan), founder of Comme des Garçons, is best known for her influence on fashion in the 1980s. Less known is that during this same period, she also designed a small body of furniture, rare works that remain largely overlooked today, with very few pieces manufactured. For Kawakubo, clothing, space and objects are closely connected. Her furniture grew out of the interiors of Comme des Garçons stores, where everything from location to display forms part of a single vision. Early works, such as the steel Angle Chair from 1983, feel like a natural extension of these environments. 

She showed little interest in traditional design concerns like comfort or production. Instead, she described her work as 'secondary furniture', pieces that create atmosphere rather than serve a clear function. Using simple materials like wood and metal, often left raw or untreated. Her work sits somewhere between furniture and sculpture, raising the question of what furniture actually is. In contrast to the expressive postmodernism of designers like Ettore Sottsass, Kawakubo's approach is restrained, almost severe, and all the more compelling because of it.