Rei Kawakubo arrived on the Paris fashion scene in the late 80s, at the height of the era of the supermodel, when the de facto message of fashion was that women were beautiful only insofar as they were polished and glamorous. Kawakubo’s collections decidedly rejected this idea, which came as a shock to the proverbial fashion system. All Kawakubo’s designs pushed the limits of wearability, but her Spring/Summer 97 collection (entitled ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body’, but commonly known as ‘Lumps and Bumps’) went as far as to challenge the limits of the female body and its desirability. Inserting kidney-shaped pillows into the linings of each piece, Kawakubo emphasised traditionally sexualised body parts (hips, breasts, ass) as well as not-so (shoulderblades). Seen here on mixed-gender performers (a collaboration between Kawakubo and choreographer Merce Cunningham from 1997), the silhouettes, at once grotesque and familiar trip the eye, as if making us question what exactly is a woman.