Dear Shaded Viewers,
Forget your coffee. Forget your croissant. If you were lucky enough to be sitting front row at 10 o’clock this morning, the only thing waking you up was pure, unfiltered, chain-rattling euphoria — because Junya Watanabe just turned a Tuesday morning runway slot into the loudest, funniest, most exuberant menswear moment of the entire week. The title said it all before a single look hit the floor: “BLING BLING BLING.” No subtlety, no apology, no half measures. Just maximum sparkle, maximum joy, and a designer who, decades into his career, is clearly having more fun than anyone else in the building.
The foundation of the whole collection was the tracksuit — but not just any tracksuit. Watanabe took the warm-up jacket, that most democratic of garments, and turned it into a canvas for pure spectacle. Look after look channeled the birth of hip-hop in New York: big gold chains piled on top of zip-up jackets exactly the way Run-DMC wore them, pearls layered in with the gold for good measure, and an energy that felt less like a fashion show and more like a celebration about to spill out into the street. It was playful. It was loud. It was, frankly, electric.
And then there were the hats.
If the tracksuits were the body of this collection, the caps — created in collaboration with artist Kota Okuda — were its soul, and they were nothing short of genius. Vintage-feeling sports caps (Yankees, Red Sox, Royals, Tigers, even a glorious DHL courier cap) were transformed into tiny jeweled crowns: oversized brooches, pearl trims, little gilded coronets perched right on the crest, safety pins, fake currency dangling off the brim, and — in some of the most theatrical moments of the show — long chains piercing straight through the hat to swing down over the model’s face like a beaded curtain. Every single one was a one-of-a-kind sculpture, and every single one was in perfect conversation with the bling stacked underneath. The synchronization between Okuda’s headwear and Watanabe’s jewel-encrusted jackets wasn’t just clever styling — it was a genuinely cohesive artistic statement, and it gave the whole show a sense of stagecraft that elevated it well beyond “just another tracksuit collection.”
Then came the show-stoppers: blazers and bombers absolutely drowning in chains, crystal flowers, charms, safety pins, and — yes — fistfuls of fake banknotes tucked into the lapels like a magician’s last trick. It was costume jewelry taken to its most gloriously excessive, maximalist extreme, the kind of look that turns heads from across a room and looks even better up close. Watanabe wasn’t just decorating a jacket — he was building wearable treasure chests, and somehow they still read as clothes you’d actually want to wear out.
For everyone wondering if Watanabe abandoned his master tailoring for a costume party — don’t worry, the craft was still very much there. Sharp suiting from Italian house Guy Rover and Neapolitan shirting via Luigi Borrelli and Maria Santangelo kept things grounded, while a procession of trench coats — reworked into capes, aprons, and even a full-length wrap skirt — proved Watanabe can still deconstruct a classic better than almost anyone in Paris. The Heinrich Dinkelacker and Tricker’s footwear brought old-world shoemaking polish to ground the spectacle, while New Balance and 47 brand sneakers kept one foot firmly on the street.
This is the part where you just have to sit back and admire the sheer scale of what Watanabe pulled off. Sixteen collaborators, woven together into one coherent, joyful collection:
- Kappa — the tracksuit backbone of the whole show
- Needles — mashing the cool-guy track jacket up with washed denim
- Carhartt — workwear toughness, bedazzled within an inch of its life
- Levi’s — denim heritage, Watanabe-ified
- Luigi Borrelli — Neapolitan shirting elegance
- Guy Rover — sharp Italian tailoring
- Maria Santangelo — refined shirting craftsmanship
- INNERRAUM — directional edge
- 47 — vintage-feeling sports caps as the canvas for Okuda’s jewels
- HIDDEN — street-level texture
- Union LA — fresh West Coast flavor
- DHL — yes, the courier giant, now dripping in pearls
- Flake — playful accent
- New Balance — sneaker cool
- Heinrich Dinkelacker — German shoemaking pedigree
- Tricker’s — British boot-making heritage
That’s not a collaboration list — that’s a love letter to the entire menswear ecosystem, stitched together with chains and crystals by one of the few designers who could make it all make sense on a single runway.
Junya Watanabe didn’t just show a collection this morning — he threw a party, and everyone who watched it got an invitation to feel a little more joyful about getting dressed. “BLING BLING BLING” was funny without being a joke, maximalist without losing its tailoring soul, and absolutely dripping — quite literally — with personality. Pearls on tracksuits! Chains through hat brims! Banknotes on blazers! It is exactly the kind of fearless, full-volume creativity that reminds you why Paris menswear week is still must-watch viewing, decade after decade.
Hair by Kiyoko Odo, makeup by Anthony Preel, and an artist collaboration with Kota Okuda that will be talked about all season — this was Junya Watanabe Man at his most gleefully, brilliantly extra. More bling, please. Always more bling.
Later,
Diane
