Dazed Digital: “Shooting Comme des Garcons in 80s Soviet Georgia”

The online version of British style magazine – Dazed Digital – takes readers back in time by publishing a story and images about a 1989 trip to Georgia where renowned Japanese fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garcons Rei Kawakubo styled local people in her designs.

Yesterday Dazed Digital published a piece and video reflecting photographer Brian Griffin’s impressions of the shoot and the country, which was during the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"The reason we went to Tbilisi was that Rei adored a Georgian naïve painter called Niko Pirosmani – both of us loved his work, by sheer fluke really. … We were about 20 minutes’ drive out of Tbilisi, on top of a hill near a Greek Orthodox Church. The locals were there and Rei was there, and the concept was to combine elements of Comme clothing with their outfits, so there would be a mix.”

Griffin remembers being shocked by seeing locals perform traditional rituals at the church where they were filming.

It was really weird because they were sacrificing animals in this church behind us as we were doing our photography, and they were hanging the little hooves of the goats and the sheep off the trees by string. They were cooking the animals, barbecuing them. At the end of the shoot … we threw a big picnic for the locals, which was good fun. We were all having great fun together.”

The next day Griffin explores Georgia’s capital Tbilisi and photographs Mother Georgia "which is quite a famous shot looking up at the steel statue”.

Looking [back] at the pictures, Griffin believes he could do "a hundred times better” now.

I couldn’t have done them better then because Rei worked really fast, too quickly for me … [but] I would have liked to just have had a few more moments to see what I was doing … but the strange thing about is everyone loves it! Rei said it was her favourite story of all the ones she did for Six. She said this was the one story above all others that she liked, which was very nice of her.”

Read the full article here: www.dazeddigital.com