Tracee Ellis Ross Tries to Explain Comme Des Garçons to an Amused Jimmy Kimmel
Tracee Ellis Ross was on of the few celebrities to wear Comme des Garçons to the Met Gala, but Jimmy Kimmel was very confused.
Tracee Ellis Ross was one of the brave few to show up on the Met Gala red carpet actually wearing one of Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons designs, becoming part of an exclusive group that included Rihanna and Caroline Kennedy. The Black-ish actress chose a sculptural blue outfit from CDG’s Spring 2016 “Blue Witch” collection. While it may not have been as constricting as Helen Lasichanh’s arm-encumbering red CDG outfit, the runway piece wasn’t exactly designed with practicality in mind, as is the case with much Comme des Garçons.
Still, as Ross explained last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she felt it was an honor to wear it. Should it be such a surprise that the daughter of one of pop’s greatest fashion risk takers, Diana Ross, would be completely fine with exchanging her full range of arm movement for a once-in-a-lifetime red carpet moment?
Kimmel, of course, is not exactly enamored by the world of fashion and is often bemused at its excesses (see his feud with Kanye West over the idea of leather jogging pants, in particularly). So naturally he had to have Ross walk him through why she chose to wear the look.
Ross explained she was attending as a guest of online retailer Farfetched, which just happens to carry Comme Des Garçons, so she actually got to wear a piece from the label (many other celebs attended as the guests of other fashion labels, and as per tradition and common courtesy, wore their host’s creations, and thus explaining why so few celebs seemed to go full-out with the theme).
“The designer who was the cochair was Comme Des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo. So she’s a very avant-garde designer. Very arts meet fashion,” explained an excited Ross. “So I got to wear a Comme des Garçons dress”
“It was such a big deal in fashion, and it was a huge deal for me,” continued Ross. “I feel like my mom taught me about glamour, and growing up I was a big fashion girl. I had magazines and loved that world, and so it was a big deal. It was a very big deal to wear that designer.”
After a picture of Ross in the outfit popped up behind the host, Ross had to convince him for a second that it was actually a big fashion moment, but did admit its particularly drawbacks.
“As you can tell, there’s not a lot of movement I could do in the dress,” she explained. “So it was a little bit like…couldn’t lift me arms up, couldn’t hug people because if I lift my arms up too high the dress would come up.”
Kimmel’s take away: he thought about the idea of teaming up with Kawakubo to get celebrities to wear the most ridiculous things possible in the name of fashion.
“I’m going to contact Rei, and Rei and I are going to work out a scheme where we come up with the most ridiculous things and try to get famous people to wear them.
“I’m going to put somebody in a big Sprite bottle.”
Actually, dressing someone in a Sprite bottle sounds more like Jeremy Scott for Moschino than Rei Kawakubo to us, but point taken.
Related: Met Gala 2017: An Early, Up-Close Look at Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between
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Rihanna at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kim Kardashian West at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Selena Gomez and The Weeknd at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kendall Jenner at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Cara Delevingne at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bella Hadid at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Celine Dion at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dakota Johnson and Alessandro Michele at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gigi Hadid at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Katy Perry at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jennifer Lopez at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kylie Jenner at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zoë Kravitz at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Madonna at the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between, Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
