On Monday, The Costume Institute at The Met will celebrate the opening of their exhibit, “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” with their annual gala. Kawakubo is only the second living designer to be the subject of a Costume Institute exhibition after Yves Saint Laurent. While she may not be as pervasive of a pop cultural icon as Mr. Saint Laurent, Kawakubo and the clothing brand that she founded in the early seventies has had no less of an impact on the world of fashion.

Never having formally studied fashion, Kawakubo has established a fundamentally unconventional approach to design that has set Comme des Garçons apart from the its inception. Now, Kawakubo has inspired countless designers and creatives, establishing an empire so vast that The Cut felt it necessary to draw up a helpful diagram to delineate the various offshoots of the CDG label. That the Costume Institute chose to focus on the in-betweenness of Kawakubo’s clothing is interesting not only from a design perspective, but in considering how the brand operates as an entity. In conceiving of the different aspects of their brand and their many collaborations, Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe, who serves as president of Comme des Garçons and their retailer, Dover Street Market, reject dualities and the arbitrary boundaries that entrench fellow fashion labels.

If fashion reflects the times we live in, CDG is the biggest, baddest mirror. One has only to track the moments when Kawakubo has surfaced throughout contemporary culture to find out what is now and what it next. In 1987, Jean-Michel Basquiat walked in CDG’s spring show. They’ve collaborated with everyone from Supreme to Nike. Kawakubo made headlines with a picture of her expressionless face taking in Demna Gvasalia’s Bernie Sanders-inspired Balenciaga Fall 2017 menswear collection. Take Vetements or Gosha Rubchinskiy as examples—the brand names on everyone’s lips. Kawakubo, by way of her revolutionary Dover Street Market retail locations, has been instrumental in the propulsion of such brands to the center stage of fashion.

An appearance by Kawakubo at Monday’s gala is doubtful, but fashion nerds have much to look forward to in the way of red carpet looks. It’s clear why the Costume Institute chose not to wait any longer to pay homage to Kawakubo’s contributions; her foresight, irreverence, and ubiquity are unrivaled.