Junya Watanabe speaks with clues often tucked inside clothes. Those hints demand more attention be paid to tiny ruptures in the menswear world. Our SHOWstudio analysis last season occupied lengthy space over a ‘pièce de résistance' crescendo within the classical notes from fall’s Watanabe MAN: an oversized Levis denim jacket dress. This harbinger of spring predicated today’s show, where Watanabe MAN waltzed across evolution into Watanabe womenswear codes that would leave Darwin speechless.
Fresh thinking softened Watanabe’s stiff menswear pragmatism with an injection of the bananas execution routinely reserved for his womens’ work. His Plight collection — the Cristobal Balenciaga meets Edward Scissorhands one — reinvigorated his men's. A funereal, goth-girl mysticism remixed itself into the brash, peacocking attitude of boys borne from fanatics of The Scorpions and Isabella Blow. Historic Watanabe articles grounded an assault as a narrative. Denim, wellies and 2018’s Carhartt-assisted parkas were reconfigured into a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Luxe Pony hair and bouclé cross-pollinated with louche Palace and Patta to cooly shift the Watanabe MAN formula from ‘Men work.’ to ‘Men? Werk!’
You do not achieve these changes overnight. For 22 years, Watanabe has hard-wired his personal language to solidify a stable core of masculine go-to’s. Therefore Junya Watanabe MAN into woMAN could not happen without a forensic underpinning of shifting societal mores around gender. As Watanabe’s army of new boys clad in tanks, cargos and a sensual swagger sauntered out to close the show, the attitude (plus those boots) blinked back to Watanabe MAN 2006. The Taxi Driver show. A collection that emphasised the importance of forward momentum. Today then was actually the quintessential notion behind Junya Watanabe MAN.