Rei Kawakubo, the brilliant mind behind Comme des Garçons, is typically almost as quiet as Martin Margiela. However, there being nothing typical about her, she's let WWD into her black-clad world. She talks about her new Beijing store, what new designers are doing wrong, and the growing strain to create something undeniably new.

What's going on in Beijing, you ask? The grand opening of a store stocked with more than a range of Comme des Garçons lines. The brand new I.T Beijing Market features pieces from Maison Martin Margiela, Rick Owens, Hussein Chalayan, Dior Homme, Ann Demeulemeester and other avant-garde visionaries.

What you really want to know - what are so many new designers doing that disappoints this fashion oracle? They are too soft on themselves, they design things that already exist! It is a sin against fashion. She firmly believes that the point of fashion is to design what has never been done. And that is why we revere her.

To that end, she is finding it harder to create new collections. She'll never make the same thing twice and humbly admits that the "breadth of possibility is getting smaller." The thought of selling her company has occurred to her and she hasn't written it off as an impossibility, but she wonders who would want it? The company is so essentially her. Her current staff that she is training will hopefully be up to the Comme des Garçons challenge: to create something resolutely new. Though more hopefully, that won't be necessary any time soon.

Link Love: WWD