The familiar flashing camera sounds of Duran Duran’s ’80s hit “Girls on Film” kicked in and a pair of New Romantic kids emerged from the side of Junya Watanabe’s runway, their hair crimped into mohawks and wedges and their makeup airbrushed on like a Patrick Nagel portrait. This was Watanabe’s first live women’s show in Paris since early 2020, and for his comeback he made a lively and enlivening tour of his codes, from deconstructed tailoring to the punk-rock badassery of chains and pearls.
Those first two looks set the silhouette: wide, ’80s-shouldered capes and a skinny leg punctuated by a sharp-toed boot dressed up with those chains and pearls. Some of the capes were caught by a belt in the front or cut like a trad two-button blazer, but turn them around and it was a different story: all swagger and sweeping shapes, punctuated by fabric selvedge. Shirting got the Junya treatment too; split personality button-downs were well fit on one side and unstructured on the other, a clutch of pearls holding them in place, while pleated shirtdresses came in Klaus Nomi–ish inverted triangles. About those pearls: They were worn as necklaces and integrated into garments, almost like belts, creating the kind of askew volumes Watanabe likes.
He seemed to be making a case for more glamour and more drama, but without disconnecting from the realities of daily life. The jeans, whose upturned cuffs revealed a flash of red tartan, were made with Levi’s, and the color-blocked and patchwork jackets came together with Komine, a Japanese racing-gear maker.
A colleague living in Tokyo saw something more here. Japan is a country that has been made sleepy, first by pandemic isolation and second by the July assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe. The extended lockdowns have kept Watanabe and his fellow Japanese designers from leaving the country, and traffic has been slow to begin flowing in the opposite direction too. So if it’s a call for sartorial drama, it’s one aimed first and foremost at his home country. There’s no mood elevator quite like a new frock, or a frock coat, as the case may be.
