Dear Shaded Viewers,
The Junya Watanabe show yesterday in Paris unfolded like a quiet revelation — a meditation on transformation, on how the banal can become sublime. Set in a stark industrial space where light fell like geometric brushstrokes, the collection turned the familiar into sculptural poetry.
Watanabe’s statement, “Extraordinary art born from the everyday,” resonated throughout the show as denim jackets morphed into tailored carapaces, trench coats fragmented and reassembled into asymmetrical cocoons, and utilitarian fabrics found lyricism in their reconstruction. This was not deconstruction for its own sake — it was reconstruction as philosophy. Each look seemed to suggest that the essence of beauty lies in reinterpretation.
Footwear, always a key punctuation in Watanabe’s visual language, arrived in dialogue with New Balance — a collaboration that distilled his ethos into motion. The sneakers, sculptural yet pragmatic, bore exaggerated soles and reworked panels that mirrored the garments’ patchwork logic. Neutral tones bled into metallic accents, suggesting both workwear and ornament, function and futurism. They grounded the collection’s ethereal energy, making the runway a landscape of kinetic art.
The rhythm of the show was deliberate, almost introspective. Models moved as if through stages of evolution, their clothing shifting from rigid and architectural to fluid and free. Stripped of spectacle yet charged with tension, the presentation read like a study in metamorphosis — the ordinary reimagined until it was almost unrecognizable, but never entirely detached from its roots.
In this SS26 collection, Watanabe reaffirmed his place as one of fashion’s true alchemists. He didn’t chase novelty — he unearthed it, drawing transcendence from things most would overlook. The result was less a runway and more an act of artistic transfiguration: every zipper, panel, and stitch became part of a quiet revolution in seeing.
The atmosphere that enveloped Junya Watanabe’s SS26 show was as carefully curated as the clothes themselves. A minimalist soundscape, composed of low, industrial drones layered with sporadic metallic taps, echoed through the space, echoing the collection’s interplay of construction and deconstruction. The lighting played a pivotal role, casting stark shadows and highlighting the garments’ angular shapes, transforming the runway into a stage where light and fabric engaged in a silent dialogue. Together, sound and light heightened the collection’s narrative of metamorphosis, lending the show a hypnotic, almost otherworldly pulse that lingered long after the final look disappeared backstage.
Hair: Eugene Souleiman (@eugenesouleiman)
Make-up: Isamaya Ffrench (@isamayaffrench)
Music:
Milky Sleep
Shhh
And Live Again
by BRIAN ENO
FOOTWEAR COLLABORATIONS :
- New Balance
Later,
Diane
