David Lynch's new album Crazy Clown Time skewers familiar musical genres—just like Mulholland Drive was a forensic dissection of film noir cliché—and that makes it some kind of aural analogy for Junya Watanabe's work in fashion. So it was purest logic that Lynch's sweet-sour music joined with Junya's clothes today in a celebration of the severely hybrid.
The designer mutated fundamental menswear codes. Everything from pinstripes to Prince of Wales checks, Oxford shoes to riding boots, camel coats to military capes—to create bold new forms. A trenchcoat became a funnel-neck cape; cuffed pants were opened out into the trailing tails of a pinstriped jacket. The ingenuity of such pieces was practically confounding.
Equally confounding was the passage of dévoréd, flocked, latticed apronlike dresses that closed the show. Colored in rose and mustard and burgundy, they had a deconstructed dustbowl-chic feel. That might suggest another of Junya's outsider analyses of Americana. As in, you put together the mutation and the deconstruction and you've got yourself a thumbnail of a society in the throes of collapse.
