A fierce, monumental cape, an almost pyramidal fusion of many motorcycle jackets materialized, and then disappeared. That was the opener for Junya Watanabe’s fall women’s collection, a strong distillation of all his talent, in a video piece shot on a white set in Tokyo.
It was a kind of poetic gothic essay on Watanabe’s obsessions with generic army surplus and American motorcycle leathers—and with the finesse and drama of golden-age French haute couture. He sent a note saying that he concentrated on working on three garments: “the motorcycle jacket, the bomber, and the checked jacket.” Models appeared and disappeared, sometimes replicated, sometimes frozen for a second, before they turned and vanished.
Essentially, the hauntings of two alien 20th century cultures were dramatically made manifest as 21st century streetwear. The volumes of Cristobal Balenciaga—cocoons, extravagant bishop sleeves, stole necklines, stately robes. The corsetry, peplums and crinolines of Christian Dior. Even, the swathes and drapes of possibly an earlier, Victorian time: all these inhabited the materials and the character of Watanabe’s collection.
We’ve seen this all along from Watanabe, of course. But this time his thought process seemed to have hit a flow-state. There was a reason behind that. Watanabe named the collection “the spiraling of winter ghosts,” after a subtitle of a track on an 1980s album by David Sylvian and Holger Czukay. Ambient sound taken from the album filled the video—experimental music which was apparently made by letting the instruments ‘play’ themselves.
Watanabe habitually quotes from the extensive catalogues of the artists and genres he admires and studies as as a fan. This time, though, there was no visual “quote.” Nothing that seemed to refer to David Sylvian’s former life as the glam, blond, floppy-haired leader of the New Romantic band Japan, though that might’ve been a temptation.
Instead he was motivated by the improvisational process of Sylvian and Czukay’s collaboration. Maybe it strengthened and encouraged him follow his instincts more intensely. Or possibly, this time, it was just easier to see what he does. The video techniques—momentarily freezing, or zooming in to show back views and profiles—described every zippered seam, layer, and patchwork in detail. Just for once, it was a better thing to watch online than it could have been in a runway show. But still, Paris misses him.
