Words by Billy De Luca

In June, the Japanese cohort (including Junya Watanabe, Comme des Garçons, Noir Kei Ninomiya, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto) made their menswear return to Paris after the two-year quarantine restrictions. This week, womenswear returns. After a moving Issey Miyake collection yesterday, the contingent is making a fierce and impressive comeback. This morning revealed some strong looks to suit.

Spring/Summer 2023 at Junya Watanabe menswear had Pop Art Americana dotted around its collection like a Lichtenstein lithograph. Today was different. The Junya Watanabe Womenswear show saw an 80s-themed concept to the collection that walked with bright spiked hair, jewel-covered footwear, and broad shoulders between heavy black curtains. Where complex and tight lines usually compress the human figure, Watanabe enforces an unconventional take on space and proportion. Raw fabrics cascade down shoulders, and oversized blazers with distorted shirts are met with pearls upon pearls. The intricate shapes from this collection hold serious weight. They pull the wearer into reality. Ample pleats and draped fabric, thick shadows and intricately cut pinstripes. All of it adds depth, protruding and shaping a second human form.

Junya has swivelled away from the idea of uniform and utility, emphasising that a wardrobe can be both practical and diverse in how garments shape the wearer. The billowing coats and motorbike jacket patterns sway past, jumping at the audience as pointed hems and free fabric branch off the models like jagged rocks.

Watanabe’s womenswear enunciates that one can always balance style with reliability, ultimately allowing every wearer to feel confident while in a shape that reflects an individual and not merely a silhouette. The radical shapes and experimental contours play with the eye and spark a yearning for fashion as truly wearable art.