AW19 Comme Des Garcons Homme Plus Nose Ring Spike Necklace

Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus Autumn Winter 2019 opened with a question: what does beauty look like when the lights go out? Rei Kawakubo’s answer wasn’t gentle. Titled Finding Beauty in the Dark, the collection pulled from 70s and 80s goth culture, leaning into shadows, distortion, and defiance. Guests were guided into an underground venue thick with bass, where the industrial death-pop duo VOWWS performed live, setting a charged atmosphere before the first model even appeared.

The runway focused on black and dark colors, unconventional materials, and dramatic silhouettes. Tailoring came as hybrids. Coats and tailcoats in brocade and jacquard split open to reveal second skins. Two-in-one jackets competed for attention. Dresses and tabards slid over trousers. Mesh tops and harnesses cinched torsos. Kawakubo’s cut-and-paste approach pushed formalwear into something volatile and unstable.

The beauty looks amplified this mood. Models wore black lipstick, smudged eyeliner, and hair shaved with cryptic markings like arrows and “R.I.P.” sigils. The effect wasn’t pure goth nor punk, but something more confrontational, as if pulled from an underground scene of its own invention. One model even flipped off photographers mid-walk, a moment that crystallised the collection’s attitude: not posturing, but resistance.

This collection stood apart as an outlier from the polished tailoring dominating Paris that season, offering a vision of beauty born out of abrasion.

Amidst the punk-inspired Air Jordan 1 Mids came another grail accessory—the chain spike harness and necklace. Upon closer inspection, each rung of the chain resembled anti-suckling devices used for calves, also called weaning rings or nose flaps. These prevent calves from nursing while allowing them to graze and remain in contact with the herd. While Kawakubo never explained the reference, it read as one of the show’s more poetic metaphors for restraint, control, and survival in the dark.