Junya Watanabe’s menswear doesn’t just use patchwork as a look; the whole collection is itself always a composite of brands, chosen for their authenticity—Carhartt, Gieves & Hawkes, Levi’s, New Balance, et al—essentially brought together to create a jigsaw of what it is to live as a civilized man. It was even clearer to see into the mind of this hunter-gatherer of the good life today. There he was: a believable walking psychological profile of a creditable middle-aged male, casually exhibiting his advanced tastes for craftsmanship and higher intellectual pursuits in his wardrobe of excellently chosen workwear.
The pointers to how this paragon of environmentally aware dandy constructs his lifestyle were all there in the array of logos printed on the sustainable cloth bags which were being carried throughout the show. He’s a drinker of craft beer (Dobri Grasshopper) and hard-to-find wines from small vineyards (Noble Fine Liquor); he eats at the specialist farm-meat-to-table restaurant (St. John in London); he is a purchaser of traceable fish (Fiskerikajen fish market in Copenhagen); and so on. And his intellectual diet consists of a varied selection of indie titles, such as Civilization newspaper from New York, and Real Review, a London cultural quarterly “dedicated to what it means to live today.” Yes, we know these guys exist, in cities all over the world. So do their female counterparts, who would love to wear exactly the kind of clothes Watanabe shows for men. He’s missing a trick here: There’s definitely a demand for non-messed-about clothing of this ilk for women. He should open it up to female peers next time.
