Geometry in motion is as good a descriptor as any for Junya Watanabe’s fall collection, in which stiff, harness-like contraptions based on square pyramids, tors and more amorphous shapes orbited the designer’s fine tailoring and dressmaking.
Watanabe began exploring prickly, jutting shapes for spring 2024 and he clearly hasn’t tired of working with such kinks.
“I want to express the beauty of the contrast between clothes and sculptures,” he said in a provided quote.
These radical clothes felt like a poke in the eye to quiet luxury, Watanabe’s camel coat abstracted into a bulging cage of polyhedrons with portals onto the floral chintz dress underneath. Practical? Hardly. Visually arresting? Off the charts.
Ultimately, the stiff, patent-leather pyramids jutting off blanket-like coats or propped over turtlenecks yielded to outerwear and dresses paved with the prismic padding found on motocross gear, and then softer Saturn-ring treatments employing plain leather strips or heavily studded belts.
It felt more futuristic than punk; the gorgeous finale coat looking like something a wicked stepdaughter of Darth Vader might wear with its imperious, jutting leather shoulders and grand, cape-like sleeves.
Watanabe slashed his fetish biker jackets and they miraculously flared out into the shape of eggbeaters, and — in a break from all the stiffer fare — sent out a puffer jacket that resembled a cone of soft-serve licorice ice cream.
Add Watanabe to the list of fashion designers this week who should be tapped to costume a sci-fi movie or series pronto.
