First published in 1988, Rei Kawakubo’s cult Comme des Garçons magazine Six was a surreal exploration of the sixth sense. Now, 35 years after its final issue, it returns in a new installation at Dover Street Market London
In 1988, Rei Kawakubo launched Six, Comme des Garçons’ now-cult publication named for the sixth sense, which ran to eight issues before ending in 1991. It was distributed free to customers and trade press, its supersized pages loose and unbound in the first two issues. This week, Six – “new again” – comes to Dover Street Market London, filling its windows and ground floor, and, a day earlier, to the Comme des Garçons store in Aoyama, Tokyo. Both follow a first iteration in the courtyard of Dover Street Market Paris in March. “It’s three in the world,” says Adrian Joffe, president of Comme des Garçons International. “There won’t be any others.”
Six was, by design, difficult to define – only the categorising eye of hindsight has pinned it somewhere between a concept magazine and a company catalogue. Tsuguya Inoue, a graphic designer who came up through advertising, was behind the layouts, and has described Six to Tokyo Weekender as “the most playful publication I ha...