“We started off wanting to do something natural, like she shapes of stones,” said Junya Watanabe’s interpreter, “and we collaborated with Marimekko.” The urge to retreat to domesticity and to the calm contemplation of nature are themes playing throughout the collections for reasons too painfully obvious to rehearse. Junya Watanabe, over in Tokyo (where Kim Jong-un has been firing warheads over the north of the country), comes from a place where block-out-the-world feelings must have a sharp reality. Maybe that’s why his collection looked back to a time and a place—Finland in the ’50s and ’60s—when humanity was capable of creating a bright and happy design for living.
Seven of the big, bold, black-and-white graphics from the Marimekko interiors fabric archive were turned to Watanabe’s purposes, as he sent out his wrapped, circular-cut, sometimes 3-D toga-cum-cocoon form pieces. The Marimekko penny really dropped with the audience when the cheerful Scandinavian classic pattern of vegetables and flowers began to come out. No matter that one of them was in the form of a tunic worn by a punky girl in thigh-high black leather boots, a spiked collar, and cuffs—that was unmistakably the stuff of tea towels, trays, and kitchen curtains she was wearing.
Even when he seemed to veer away from the Marimekko scheme of things, coming up with sailor-stripe jersey T-shirt dresses, it turns out (should you wish to Google) he was nodding to the fact that the designer Annika Rimala had first used cotton jersey stripes at the Helsinki HQ in 1968. That leads to another thought about Watanabe and how he works. At a time when appropriating the already existing is a much talked-about practice in fashion (just look at the methods of Alessandro Michele at Gucci, John Galliano at Maison Margiela, and Demna Gvasalia at Vetements), Watanabe has the longest record of all as a designer-collaborator. The difference with him is that the relationships with external companies he admires and respects for their aesthetics and specific expertise are authentic ones, not just “inspired by” looks. Further footnotes on the show revealed the fact that the biker jackets, a Watanabe classic, are in fact produced in partnership with Schott.
For all this, it was pretty un-theme-y, this show. Despite his insistence on punk hairdos and accessories, there’s a romantic side to Watanabe. His long, full skirts—one black and Victoriana-like and the other with a stiffer ’50s-ball-gown vibe—threw minds optimistically forward into how nice it would be to swirl around in them next summer. Assuming nuclear annihilation doesn’t get in the way.
