'Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress, and Become One' © Stany Dederen

For Spring/Summer 1997, Rei Kawakubo took the idea of ‘rethinking the body’ a step further and launched her famous ‘Lumps ‘n Bumps’ collection, called ‘Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress, and Become One’: a collection which integrated organic padded shapes, thus de- or reforming the human body. Kawakubo called it ‘rethinking the body’, whereas the press dubbed the collection ‘Quasimodo’, or worse ‘the ugliest collection of the year’. Choreographer Merce Cunningham, who worked with the collection in his Scenario production, simply stated: “the lumps are familiar shapes we can see every day, a bike messenger with a bag over the shoulder, a tourist with fanny pack, a baby on a mother’s arm”. Recently, MoMu acquired this original dress at the Didier Ludot Paris auction.