The collection was titled ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even’, the same name as the Marcel Duchamp work that Kawanishi drew his initial inspiration from, after seeing the piece in person at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The original work features nine garments hanging oddly on a clothesline (‘the Bachelor’s apparatus’), what Kawanishi saw as the uniforms of the nine bachelors vying for the love of the Bride, who is present as a geometric form in the upper panel (‘the Bride’s Domain’). These silhouettes were formed by Duchamp from insignificant materials such as lead foil, fuse wire and dust. The glass panels are shattered and the piece is often called ‘The Large Glass’, the mirror Kawanishi can hold up to the materialist debauchery of the fashion industry, its pace and thirst the shattering, and rightly so.
The similarity, -dare- homage, to Duchamp’s piece is evident through the process and materials of Kawanishi’s collection. Instead of using the uniforms of the nine bachelors, which Kawanishi notes as those of the priest, the delivery boy, the bus boy, etc, he “chose a readymade object for each, instead of a uniform.” The collection’s nine looks are the bride’s nine bachelors, most obviously her delivery boy with a Fedex branded jacket and a skirt made of parcel tape.