Not many designers can say their leg-up into the industry came directly from fashion deity Rei Kawakubo – but Junya Watanabe isn’t just any designer. An unofficial protégé to the Comme des Garçons founder (for whom he spent years working as a pattern-cutter, later as the design director of Comme des Garçon’s Tricot line), it’s been a little over 30 years since he debuted his eponymous womenswear label under the Comme umbrella. Ten years later he introduced Junya Watanabe Man, following the same ethos he’d nurtured through years of design – approaching menswear with a sense of restraint and pragmatism, and instilling a radical complexity into everyday staples. With an emotive, sometimes sombre approach and proven reconstructive know-how, Watanabe reinvents what we know menswear to be, constantly pushing the ordinary to the extraordinary.
Underlying Junya Watanabe Man’s Autumn/Winter 2024 collection, presented last week in an unassuming dusty setting in central Paris, was the suit, which became subject to an elaborate reworking. True to his education in the Japanese school of design more generally, Watanabe holds dear the sentiment that experimentation in cut and shape is not only of prime importance, but it’s also what can push menswear, and fashion in general, into radical new eras. Juxtaposing the complex, Savile Row-quality suiting were the codes of rebellion – namely a magisterial use of ripped denim and studs – which came underpinned by Watanabe’s signature dark romanticism. Tailoring for rebels seems antithetical, but these ideas are made, literally, inseparable from one another, with denim jeans and khaki chinos stitched into formal jackets and trenches so that they tentacle in front of the leg. It’s those conflicting ideas that speak the unmistakably Junya dialect that cult devotees have learned fluently.
Khakis were sourced from a partnership with Carhartt, caps from Palace, and denim from Levi’s. Watanabe is no stranger to collaboration – he designed a series of Converse All Star trainers in 2007 to global acclaim, and partnered with Puma to use their acid-hued fabrics for his S/S13 collection. It was his first ever Man collection in 2001, titled Debut, that saw his reconstruction techniques brought to Levi’s 501 jeans, using a pre-existing staple to embellish his own narrative. Slicing and patchworking pieces with their pre-existing notions, there’s a sense of collage to Watanabe’s melding of wardrobes which welcomes a cross-generational wearer. He did not appear for a customary bow at the end of the show – Watanabe famously refuses most press interviews, preferring to let the work speak for itself. The collection’s press notes were 14 words long, 11 of them being: “I wish for men of different generations to wear these suits.”
Below, we speak to four men who worship at the altar of Watanabe, each embracing the designer’s beautifully innovative approach to menswear.
Ben Harper, Musician
“I woke up to a text message from the manager of Comme des Garçon’s New York store this morning. Let me read it to you: ‘Hello, it’s Lane from Comme des Garçons. I’m excited to announce that new Junya Watanabe Spring/Summer 2024 will arrive on February 1.’ If there’s one text that you want to wake up to when you love fashion, it’s that one. Lane is looking out for me.
“Anybody who knows anything about fashion knows that Tokyo is ground zero for the planet when it comes to cutting-edge fashion. I first saw Junya Watanabe’s clothing hanging off other people – it was a cross between traditional and futuristic. It was timeless and unique, with a unique fashion genetic code.
“In my family, fashion has been a place we can bond – father to son, father to daughter – it’s part of our dialogue, our language, and they’ll cop a piece of Junya out of my closet in a heartbeat. My 22-year-old son and I are massive Comme des Garçons fans. He found it on his own, and then he discovered I had what could be considered a closet full of it. Junya has one foot in accessibility and the other in eccentricity – he’s not making clothes for the fashion faint of heart. It’s for the fashion bold, and the fashion brave, and that’s where I like to live. I feel that they’re all a piece of what makes me who I am as a person, and I find he takes the same risks in design as I try to do in my music.”
“Junya Watanabe is a semaphore for cool. It’s that simple: wear Junya and it’s all done. No worry. No hassle. No competition” – Richard Gray
Richard Gray, Fashion Writer
“The first Junya Watanabe Man show I went to was his first show: S/S02. It’s the one with the repeated poem, block-printed on boxy jeans and T-shirts, and seemingly random words printed across the chest or on the back of shirts and cardis. I was hooked. I counted down the days from the show in September before it hit Browns the following spring and told them to call me as soon as any of it came in. I was first in the queue and bought the Liberty-print short-sleeved shirt with ‘WATERMELON’ printed on the front and the boxy jeans. The ego on this one when he walked into Popstarz that Friday night ... I’m surprised I got through the door, to be honest.
“I must own 30 pieces of Junya, although I’ve sold a lot. The coats are the best bits, and, specifically, the coats from the past few years. He’s got his head around that idea of the big winter coat and it’s chimed perfectly with gorpcore. The Northface collabs, the Palace collabs; the everything collabs – Junya was doing collabs before they were a thing. There are a few favourite shows of mine, but the one when they all came out at the end wearing black dungarees. The cropped trousers and fair-isle coat magic of A/W21 was a banger. A/W18 was incredible, my bank manager didn’t thank me that season. S/S06: also a winner – those waterproof gingham shirts and the Lacoste polo in bright pink! I wore that with massive camel chinos all that summer. I could go on …
“Junya Watanabe is a semaphore for cool. It’s that simple: wear Junya and it’s all done. No worry. No hassle. No competition. Junya for the win. It also keeps much of its value, I’ve found. It’s not up there with a Hermès Birkin but when I’ve sold bits they’ve not done bad at resale. Although, I regret everything I’ve ever sold and can’t think about it too much. Remind me: I really do need to get out more.”
Ruddy Trobrillant, Content Creator and Athlete
“I discovered Comme des Garçons when I saw it on Kanye West in 2008. Then I said to myself, ‘OK, it’s time to go to the store, I’m sure there are more things for me.’ As I was exploring the store, there was a rude shop assistant, but I loved what he was wearing: full-look Junya Watanabe. At this time in my life, I was wearing workwear a lot, so when I saw this guy in full workwear from another planet, with patches on jeans, new shapes, Oxfords on his feet, I said to myself, ‘When I’m older I want to dress like this. Junya Watanabe is crafting the way I want to dress.’
“Year on year I bought more of Junya Watanabe’s clothes second-hand. I just collected and stocked them. My first piece was Junya Watanabe x Levi’s patchwork jeans, and for the past few years, I’ve been wearing Junya Watanabe every day, and for all occasions. It became my go-to, mixing archives with new collections, mixing his work with my running gear to go practice. Watanabe is definitely doing what he loves and what he wants. He was the first in CDG to do collaborations, so if he wants to make ten or more collabs per season, he will do it. He reimagined the ideas of workwear, tech-wear and utility. It’s a wardrobe that you need for every moment of your life.
“I just feel myself when I’m wearing Junya Watanabe Man or Junya Watanabe because I can wear those clothes anywhere. I can say I feel free in them.”
“When one wears Junya Watanabe one feels a sense of belonging; he crafts a humorous yet utilitarian world where you just feel ready. Unsuspecting, yet beyond equipped” – Rory Cole
Rory Cole, Archivist
“I first discovered the magical universe of Watanabe-san when I was around 16. Growing up in East Yorkshire, England, it was an incredibly insular-minded and countrified way of being. I began to fixate on [Watanabe’s] construction, finishing, and his purposeful design with reason. Every single piece I looked at ran a million questions through my mind as to the how and why. Why couldn’t this be every garment from anywhere? It couldn’t be. It would have to be Junya.
“I currently have around 240 to 250 pieces by Junya Watanabe in my wardrobe. Picking a favourite usually should be impossible but, as one piece that has personal meaning to me, a sashiko overdyed indigo denim patchwork jacket from Spring/Summer 2015 would have to take the spot. It has a thick stitch-bonded cotton base, with a beautiful Japanese contrast design in white ivory. The entire inside of the bodice is pocket-panelled.
“His output in design is so resonant with an everyday man; it’s functional for purpose, but exudes magnificence at the same time. When one wears Junya Watanabe one feels a sense of belonging; he crafts a humorous yet utilitarian world where you just feel ready. Unsuspecting, yet beyond equipped. It is human nature to want to feel great. Watanabe-san offers that to the men who feel the draw of the wonder and mystery he has created.”