Destitute

The Washington Post, "From Rei Kawakubo, Adding Layers of Meaning" by Robin Givhan

Kawakubo didn't abscond with that indigent woman's actual identity -- the designer probably has never even seen this particular woman. But Kawakubo appropriated the one thing that forcefully announces the presence of the disenfranchised in the world, one of the few things that keep them from disappearing: Belongings. The rainbow of fabric in a Sudanese refugee camp, the piles of broken shoes in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a stack of jackets and parkas in a coat drive. We might not see the individual, but we see their plight. We see something.