Who is Junya Watanabe?
On July 22nd, 2021, Kanye West threw a listening party for his latest album at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. Wearing a futuristic outfit, he played his selection of new songs— causing the crowd to go wild where millions worldwide also streamed the event on Apple Music. The noteworthy song that international listeners tuned into, Junya (ft. Playboi Carti), discusses donning Junya Watanabe’s high-end fashion pieces as a status symbol, worthy of West’s brash and upfront bragging. The lyrical repetition of “Junya Watanabe on my” during the song was extremely notable and quite newsworthy— so much so that the search was immediately trending on the internet: “Who is Junya Watanabe?”
A master of fine-tuning familiar silhouettes and enmeshing them within mind-altering states, it was unjust and shocking that a 2021 Kanye West song had prompted so many to just now find out about Junya Watanabe’s status and success in the fashion industry—yet, the newfound recognition of Watanabe’s accomplishments among a young audience is also to be appreciated as a fashion revolutionary should never go without honor. When Justin Bieber sported one of Watanabe’s varsity jackets in 2011 on the Today Show, the same debate was displayed among diehard fashion fans… it was amazing that Junya Watanabe was more accessible and successful than ever, but he was their little secret where fans placed value on hard-to-find pieces and felt the public diminished both the clothing and the mythical founders’ appeal of anonymity.
Junya Watanabe’s designs are described as both “puzzling” and “sublime”, a duality between “simplicity” and “complexity”. What do these designs entail? Who is the eccentrically mysterious, mythical, nonetheless legendary Watanabe behind the work?
Born in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima in 1961, Junya Watanabe was raised under his mother who owned a small bespoke clothing store in the area. Although his first foray into fashion, Watanabe says that nothing in particular there compelled him to start his journey into the fashion industry. Instead, through his own personal study, he stumbled upon designers Issey Miyake and Pierre Cardin, whose influence spans decades.
Issey Miyake’s groundbreaking and industry-shifting designs specifically called to Watanabe- “I was attracted to the fact that designers before Miyake, such as Dior and the big names, created fitted clothing. Issey totally subverted that idea. This approach had a strong impact on me. To make me want to create something, the idea of clothing very different from previous designers”. And, for Pierre Cardin, the Frenchman similarly employed distinct, rigid shapes and an obsession with geometric forms that would ultimately be worn by Jackie Kennedy and the Beatles.
Watanabe’s modus operandi, inspired by Miyake’s subverted notion of designing, means he typically uses “monozukuri” to describe his work. Translations of Watanabe explain that “[the word] is very specific to Japanese culture… you could translate it to craftsmanship, but it’s more than that. It has more depth. It’s more about the design aspect, the aesthetics. How do you create something?” Typically, the English word craftsmanship references the person behind a craft. Conversely, “monozukuri” is formed from “mono” (thing) and “zukuri” (to make, to grow, manufacture). The individual making the craft takes a passive, backstage role to showcase the act of making. Watanabe believes in de-emphasizing himself in this same way, rarely allowing interviews, restricting discussing his personal life, and even mutes discussion about his own work… many of his assistants and employees have never even visited Watanabe’s studio.
Issey Miyake and Pierre Cardin would inevitably become Watanabe’s biggest inspirations to prompt enrollment at the Bunka Fashion College di Tokyo. Soon after his graduation from the school, Watanabe would end up being hired somewhere that would change the course of his career forever— Comme des Garçons. At CDG, Watanabe started as a pattern cutter and apprentice pattern maker. Even through these introductory roles, Watanabe’s sheer talent did not go unnoticed. Rei Kawakubo, the founder of Comme des Garçons and then Dover Street Market, was perceptive and realized Watanabe could take on far more roles in the brand. Rei’s influence in the fashion sphere is legendary in the industry, and her legacy continued with her keen eye for recognizing new talent. Her success has perpetuated with her reputation of plucking talent out of the woodwork, promoting their success, and retaining them within the umbrella of CDG. While Watanabe was the first instance of such talent recruitment, she later explained in the Wall Street Journal that “Junya Watanabe is a part of such a necessary company-expansion policy… collaborations have no meaning if 1+1 does not equal much more than 2.” Working under her wing, and only 23 at the time, Junya Watanabe was promoted to Chief Designer of the female Tricot line at CDG, holding this position while also working on Homme until eventually launching his namesake label in 1992: Junya Watanabe for Comme des Garçons. This line debuted in Tokyo for FW 1992 and the regular showing in Paris consequently started in 1993. His mens’ namesake line, Junya Watanabe MAN for Comme des Garçons, debuted soon after in SS 2002.
Junya Watanabe’s piece in the greater jigsaw of CDG was a perfect fit— as Kawakubo and Watanabe both were industry disruptors, Junya promoted a functional, practical, almost utilitarian duality between simplicity and complexity, sublime and puzzling. Kawakubo focuses more on a more utopian, mystical view of fashion, but both her and Junya promote this same “anti-fashion” mentality applied very clearly in their designs and complemented very well by each other’s diverse niches.
With a vision of his own beyond what Kawakubo taught him, Watanabe also applies Bauhaus principles in his work. Bauhaus was a German design school from 1919 to 1933, influential in its tenets to focus on minimalism, stripping the border between an artist and a craftsman, and creating functional designs (“form follows function”). In his methodical and scientific way, Watanabe used design and content as an actuality using reality as the foreground. Junya’s status as a so-called “high modernist” is reflected through his rejection of the tempting preferences and prejudices that most modern-age designs and constructions take on. Watanabe’s objectivity allows him to then design in a contrarian fashion that makes every viewer and wearer question their already preconceived notions of “dressing correctly”. Maintaining the purity of his designs also means Watanabe pays no mind to fellow designers around the world, rather, his own existence and personal experience fuels his vision. He admits, “I don’t really know what they’re doing.”
Between his initial launch and where his career stands now, Watanabe’s original focus was on womenswear. Each collection specifically hyper focuses on fit, history, and appropriate fabrication. Dubbed “prophetic” by some, Watanabe’s designs encapsulate the axis of collective unconscious by which the rest of the fashion world is currently turning. For example, his work through the 90’s was considered “techno-couture”, reflecting a similarly Cardin-esque of a societal leaning into space-age futurism. The fit and fabric to do so was using tweed, flannel, and plaid.
Using his intuitive utilitarianism to use fabrics in high regard with current 90’s culture combined with where he feels the future is headed, the SS 2000 collection “Function and Practicality” was pioneering. With models strutting down the runway wearing culturally acceptable and regular slips and skirts, they stopped mid-runway to undress and then invert each piece of clothing to reveal a different color and/or print. They then began walking under a simulated rain cloud indoors with water drenching their outfits (the 2-in-1 clothes were also waterproof!). Vogue described his show as “nothing short of an epiphany”.
These designs that make a user’s life more streamlined and functional—whether it’s waterproofing or breathability—assist in everyday life or actions that require industry-specific detail like climbing, fishing, or motorsports. Additionally, Watanabe typically will employ advanced mathematical concepts like tesseracts woven throughout his designs. This combines a retrospective and empathetic take and a futuristic vision of the world, assisting the modern human body with temperature regulation, flexibility of textile, and administration of chemical compounds for health management.
This legacy was then carried onto Watanabe’s menswear collection, personally dubbing them as “dumb clothes” that would end up making up a majority of his mens’ and womens’ pieces. With the same plaids, tweeds, and flannels utilized in womenswear, Watanabe began creating mundane staples with a strange, beautiful complexity that reflected his quirksome and practical reinventions of timeless societal staples. This involved denim, trench coats, and utility jackets.
Some of these MAN designs took influence from fishing jackets and Bauhaus principles behind them- creating jackets with such attention to fishing-specific needs and detail that they rivaled, if not outpaced, the big brand equivalents for fishermen. Watanabe took such pride in the attachments, clipping, reinforced seams, panel construction, metal versus plastic parts, and straps that everything he made— even fishing-inspired jackets— were so functional so the user could have the most perfect wear. Similarly, in 2016, he developed and designed a trench coat with solar panels installed in the front and back, so that the trench coat could encapsulate a power pack and wiring that would allow users to charge devices on the go.
To see a similar pattern in his shows, examining even just a few collections will show Watanabe’s commitment to this consistent mantra.
Watanabe’s SS 2003 explored “the jacket” in all forms possible— biker jackets, moto jackets, garage jackets, windbreakers and more. Combining this with similar notoriety in FW 2005, both were littered with mountaineering and alpine references well ahead of the 2020 revival of gore-tex and functional mountain fashion as streetwear.
Then, Watanabe’s 2006 collections reflected Watanabe’s idolization and “love of workwear and the American tradition.” SS 2006 specifically honored the American working class with designs familiar with any blue collar worker in any region of the country. Tim Blanks said the same in his review for Vogue, stating, “Janitors, carpenters, and kitchen staff across Middle America might have recognized familiar details… the pinstriped canvas, for instance, or the topstitching, or the hardy zippers… to the fabrics: canvas, denim, nylon and pleather”. The consequent collection, FW 2006, honed in on the American classic Taxi Driver and the character Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro). The collection focused mainly on military styles, almost all in olive green. Watanabe used camouflage and patchwork to give that same functionality to a traditional blazer created in military fabric (Vogue).
In 2015, Watanabe’s SS 2015 focused on traditional Japanese peasant clothing, although an average watcher may have just noticed the collection was entirely indigo and denim. With boro patchwork adorning every piece, Watanabe reclaimed what was typically considered low-brow in peasantry into something beautiful (rarely attributed to items associated with the low-income community by fashion elites).
Creating such familiar pieces that are attainable and nostalgic for so many, while fascinatingly differentiated, lends an inkling into why Junya Watanabe has been so well-loved. You may own a plaid shirt or a tweed jacket, but his versions are simply “different” even to an average onlooker — and debatably even better than the original.
Long before the culture of collaborations blossomed in the 2020’s, Junya Watanabe was partnering up with some of the most respected and longstanding brands in the fashion industry. Creating this unprecedented portfolio of quality collaborations has required hard work; to partner with Levi’s, Carhartt W.I.P., Converse, The North Face, Brooks Brothers, Lacoste, among more, is nothing short of legendary. As someone who claimed to not pay attention to what other designers are doing, this streak of collaborations may seem hypocritical, but becomes logical in realizing Watanabe’s motivations to do so. Each of these brands is culturally iconic for their attention to quality— each of them is seen as being among the best at what they do. Out of respect for their heritage and tradition, like the venerated Levi’s for American middle-class fashion, Watanabe will choose these brands to partner with since he honors them as being able to create the most raw, authentic expression of the cultural concept he’s trying to convey. Why try to emulate and forge Levi’s significance in American history in his own line when he can simply partner with Levi’s?
Among the most famous fashion greats, Watanabe with no debate has become part of this club. Ironically enough, with his public appearances able to be counted on two hands, he might not even be bothered by his celebrity (nay, superstardom) status. He doesn’t care what other designers are up to, he doesn’t find value in following basic trends, and pays no attention to what’s currently happening in the fashion sphere besides to take his own scientific calculation of trend axes to use for personal design gain. It’s hard to imagine how Watanabe’s shoes will be filled after his retirement, but as of now, every collection from one of fashion’s greatest designers (anthropologists, even) is something to be cherished. Although his personal life and convictions keep him out of the light, there is no doubt that Junya Watanabe, as a fashion designer, fashion anthropologist, and encyclopedic mind, will always have the historical spotlight.