By Abbie Stokes

Junya Watanabe’s fall 2022 collection is a most memorable one. Being a mostly black colored theme with pops of earth tones throughout, there are clear inspirations that Watanabe has taken from “generic army surplus and American motorcycle leathers—and with the finesse and drama of golden-age French haute couture.”

Watanabe named the collection “the spiraling of winter ghosts,” after a subtitle of a track on an 1980s album by David Sylvian (from the 80s New Romantic band Japan) and Holger Czukay. This description is definitely seen throughout the runway, whether it be through shining, flowing leather or the flowing silhouettes of some of the patchwork-esque dresses. The textures of all the clothes also add to the ghostly appearance of the collection as a whole. The way the light reflects off the leather makes the models appear otherworldly, and the almost Victorian-era shapes of the dresses harken to an older time and make it seem like the models walked out of the late 1800s and through a machine to transform the fabric into a modern garment.

Overall this collection is one that takes classic garments and innovates them to another level: a collection that is both artistic yet somehow fundamentally wearable.