There was a lot of nature and handicraft in Junya Watanabe’s brilliantly subversive show today, from flowers heavily embroidered into lace handkerchief-point dresses to Kamo’s spectacular feather headpieces crowning every look. This array of delicate and traditional looking dresses were paired with wonderfully conceived tulle military jackets, reworked trenchcoats or were sliced and layered with black asymmetric panels. Watanabe’s show was all the more intriguing for its nocturnal setting; models walked out into an almost dark room with fragments of light showing the way, the music stopped whilst the models were still walking and the lights went out abruptly at the end. Watanabe designed this collection in the aftermath of the earthquake and meltdown of the Fukushima power plant and one could not help wondering if he was silently commenting on the impact of this year’s disaster.
Text: Caroline Newell
Photography: Mitchell Sams
