This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the spring and fall fashion weeks. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Over the past 16 years, eminent street style photographer Tommy Ton has taken millions of frames outside fashion shows around the world. But it wasn’t until last week that he finally got the shot he’d been pursuing for his entire career: a quiet and beautiful portrait of Rei Kawakubo, the elusive and mysterious creative force behind Comme des Garçons.

It was, Ton tells me the day after returning from Paris, “just this magical moment.” A moment that instantly went industry-viral when Ton posted it on Instagram.

It was the Saturday of Paris Fashion Week, a holiday in all of Comme-dom, the traditional date when the Japanese brand and its sub-labels (like Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya) unveil their collections. Ton was outside the Junya Watanabe venue, usually the earliest-morning show of the entire week, much to the chagrin of bleary-eyed buyers. Ton got there ahead of schedule. “It’s the day that I look forward to the most,” he says.

The Style.com and Vogue veteran, 39, was a fashion fan before he was a photographer. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of every Marc Jacobs collection ever and an archive of rare and important Dries Van Noten. Photographically, Ton’s eye is drawn to detailed sartorial flexes and authentic style moments. So for Ton, Comme day, when Kawakubo devotees hit the streets decked in their freakiest through-the-looking-glass CdG gowns and suits, is like shooting fish in a barrel.

“It’s a day where people can wave their freak flag,” Ton says. “It’s a celebration of fashion on the highest level, a day when fashion is so welcomed to the point where there’s no judgment. It’s so much fun.” You might recall Ton’s famous street style flick of Virgil Abloh and Kanye “Ye” West’s crew at Paris Fashion Week in 2009. That was outside Comme des Garçons Homme Plus.

And at the center of the sartorial drama is the sphinxlike Kawakubo, who has long insisted that the best way to know her is to look at her clothes. Ton calls her a unicorn. Images of Kawakubo exist—anonymity is not central to her creativity, as it was for the reclusive Martin Margiela. But she avoids interviews and cameras, quickly slipping in and out of her shows surrounded by a retinue of aides. “It’s kind of like an unspoken rule,” Ton says. “You never take photos of Rei.”

Which hasn’t stopped Ton from trying, driven more by a deep sense of admiration than anything resembling an Ahab-like madness. “She represents this greatness,” he says. “So even if she’s just in passing, you gasp when you see her. So in the past, any opportunity I had to take a picture of her, if she’s running into her car or being whisked away, I would try to do the best I could.” Ton never got the moment he wanted. Most recent photographs of Kawakubo are of a slight woman, her black bob streaked with gray, walking purposefully away from the photographer.

On Saturday, outside Junya Watanabe, Ton finally got his chance. And just as quickly, he almost squandered it.

“I was photographing all the staff members, which they were kind enough to let me do, because they’re all very notoriously shy. And then I look through the crowd and I see Rei just standing there.” Kawakubo had materialized on the sidewalk, talking to her husband, Comme and Dover Street Market CEO Adrian Joffe, and members of their team. Ton started taking photos of her through the crowd. “And then I thought, oh, how harmless would it be if I just went around and got a bit closer?” He approached, closer but not too close. “And then, as I was about to take a photo, that’s when she turned. And then that’s how you get the photo of her kind of smiling.”

That’s also when Joffe saw what Ton was doing. The Australian executive—an amicable guy if you get to know him!—firmly shooed Ton away. “I felt extremely embarrassed at that point,” Ton recalls. Ton did the only thing he could think of and hid behind a nearby Metro sign. As any fashion week regular knows, Ton is one of the most respectful photographers plying the streets. His style is to hang on the margins of the crowd, about as far from the celebrity paps as possible, patiently waiting for the moments other lensmen might not see. He is beloved in the industry. But Ton had gotten nabbed breaking the unspoken rule. “I just felt like, How could I do something so stupid?” he says.

At risk of slight overstatement, what happened next was basically a fashion week miracle. Ton, still hiding behind the sign, poked his head and lens out. Kawakubo had walked in his direction, and was standing on the curb. She looked over at Ton. “And then she took another step, and that’s when she just stood there and she faced my direction, and I just lifted my camera up and I took one or two shots. She didn’t budge, and I just thought, Let’s go.”

For a few seconds, Ton recalled, everything around Kawakubo went still. Joffe and her staff, the crowd behind her, “totally just shifted.” “Somehow, it was just this magical moment that happened where she was blessing me with this opportunity to take a portrait of her. And there was not a single person in the background.” As soon as Ton had gotten his shot, Kawakubo turned and walked into the show.

The image, Kawakubo poised in her crisp black blazer, is special, the result of Ton’s diligence and grace built up 16 years. “She knows what you mean,” the fashion critic Tim Blanks commented on Instagram. Ton, of course, is modest as ever. “I think it was a very kind gesture she gave to me,” he said. “Maybe she felt bad that I got shooed away, and then when she saw me again she felt like, What’s the harm? Let him have a photo.”

Ton is currently working on a career-spanning street style anthology. “Rei will have some nice coverage” in it, he promises.

The pursuit of street style glory, however, is never over. “I definitely felt like I achieved something I’ve been wanting to achieve for a long time,” Ton says. “But that didn’t stop me from trying to take another photo of her two days later.”

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