Excerpt: Junya Watanabe Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week

 

"I have surmised the 'what ifs', within fashionable concepts or redefining timelines, aka Generation X'er Nicolas Ghesquière creative direction for Louis Vuitton, that is his beloved 1950s futurism which endured the counterculture years, ending up being imprinted on what we know today.  The same could be said about the secluded Japanese fashion designer Junya Watanabe, who is thought to be aged 61 or 63, which makes him a so called baby boomer.   And despite reflecting degrees of obscurity and even ambiguity between the two designers, without overly reading too much into the echoes of their aesthetics, it would be Watanabe who is by far the most adventurous.

The Baby Boomers, even though it maybe hard to admit, but undeniably it is the truth, were that epitome of risque, whether Generation X was the generation that reverted back into conservatism throughout the 1990s and onwards, reestablishing that technological pragmatism, with its structured desire of stability that actually was the 1950s, before they were born.  In which the counter cultures of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s very much rebelled against as a stagnated, autocratic and rigid society.  It has been since embraced with gusto..."

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Full review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/10/junya-watanabe-spring-2025-paris.html

(A.Glass 2024)