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.

Watanabe, for his Spring 2025 collection, set forth the runway soundtrack from the late *Donna Summers 1977 hit "I feel Love".  And it is Watanabe's dystopian array, showcasing that tumultuous timeline and collapsed cities, that the 1970s and 1980s were at least honest of the possibility that thermonuclear destruction was nigh.  Far removed from the 21st Century prefabricated whitewash, that all is well as the world swings further to Far Right of politics.   You may ineed ask, how the hell did we get to this?    Well, I blame with a sardonic overture, debt piled mortgages, netflix and mobile phones.  Yes, I am awaiting the return of analog and videotapes.  Aren't you?  

And science fiction is mostly on point within its hit and miss ratio, because what we do not confront and accept, to either change or embrace becomes the hyperreal, and my goodness are we living in hyperreal times.  As even the morbid curiosity seems unreal.  Yet, the reality is that we just came out of a global pandemic, the worst viral outbreak since the Spanish flu of 1918,  straight into genocidal wars, inflation, global and climate upheaval.  Very much like a science fiction script, except denial has been that order of the day.  And, all is well on a mobile phone screen with its 24 hour social media feeds, filled with 'famous for 15 seconds' nobodies piling up ad infinitum.  It's all repetition, before the 11th hour.  Am I too doomsdayish?

Watanabe doesn't think so, drawing from, at least aesthetically, the 2014 dystopian Artificial Intelligence inspired movie 'Ex-Machina', of what it is to be human.  And in a postmodern prose; could we relate to AI as a human?  And vice versa.  With the ultimate question being asked.  Will AI save us from ourselves or destroy us?  Whatever the questions one may ponder, it is Watanabe's late 1970s esque sci-fi template which offers that just right amount of hedonistic sexual tension.  It is sex and doomsday.  With 31 styles on display, from dystopic clad metallic looks, through to its urban goth styles towards the end of the showing.  So, envision walking through service alleyways in-between prefabricated buildings of glass and steel, surveying the pieces of cladding that has fallen of from their façade.  And your mobile phone doesn't work, and the digital networks are down.  Sans a handheld pager, and your MiniDisc music player.

The Future is now.

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(A.Glass 2024) 

*Junya Watanabe Spring 2025 clip has the music turned off, for some reason.