Japanese influences in Paris with Junya Watanabe, Noir, Comme des Garçons

Once again, Japanese creativity shines at Paris Fashion Week for its inventiveness and innovation. As demonstrated on Saturday by the women’s ready-to-wear collections for the Fall/Winter 2024-25 by three of the most cutting-edge Japanese labels. Junya Watanabe, Noir by Kei Ninomiya and Comme des Garçons staged awe-inspiring shows, many of their creations akin to artworks.

Junya Watanabe’s arty warrior women

Straitjackets or armour? Fashion or art? Once again, Junya Watanabe has blurred fashion’s codes, pushing couture experimentation even further. He riffed on the extraordinary disassembly-reassembly concept he developed last season, and continued along this route, working with a series of wardrobe essentials which he dismantled and then pieced together again into entirely novel, spectacular shapes.

Into these seemingly mutant garments, Watanabe introduced rigid geometric elements like the giant vinyl triangles he incorporated into tweed and wool capes, accenting a shoulder or creating empty sections.
 
He fused these excrescence-like shapes, made in black leather, within a dark winter wardrobe featuring jackets, trousers-skirt hybrids, overcoats and dresses. His geometric shapes both skewed and emphasised the silhouette while adding power to it, for example in the guise of large acute angles emerging outward from the garment’s surface, or leather yokes armouring the shoulders and torso.

Huge, interwoven swathes of neoprene created a sculpture-like carapace around the models, while enormous down-filled noodles transformed a top in a giant triple buoy wrapped around the torso. Elsewhere, voluminous layers of Napa or crocodile-effect leather morphed a coat into an accordion, and transformed another into a work of contemporary art. Trench coats, of which only the basic structure remained, were deployed like a tent over pleated floral dresses, or blossomed into long leather strips that fell to the floor like petals.
 
Watanabe worked with all kinds of padding and protective materials, inserting them patchwork-style into jackets, gilets and coats to fashion a series of galactic warrior uniforms. He also played with leather belts, adding several to a dress’ waist, using them as support structure, or wrapping them around the waist and neck in other garments. Various shiny, silvery-studded straps were worn like a cartridge belt across the shoulder.

Rei Kawakubo’s “wrath’ at Comme des Garçons

Leather and oversize volumes played a big part also at Comme des Garçons, which showed a powerful collection of striking black total looks, except for the last model, which wore a burgeoning white bridal dress, featuring transparent bags filled with flesh-coloured tulle worn like an inflated petticoat under an ample skirt.

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Kawakubo started from the iconic rebel biker jacket to express her “wrath,” the title of Comme des Garçons’s collection for next winter. She has de-contextualised the biker jacket in order to better deconstruct it, then reassemble it into imposing formal dresses.

“This collection expresses my current mood. I’m angry at the whole world, and at myself in particular,” said the prominent Japanese designer, who sought inspiration in French 18th century aesthetic. The outlandishness of the Versailles’s court’s opulent fashion gave her the means to transpose her feelings of rage and darkness into superlative contemporary costumes, infused with a rocker touch.
 
The thick, glossy black leather of a biker jacket became the stuffing of crinolines, oversize hoop dresses with extra volume at the hips, kimono sleeves, double skirts and petticoats, as well as bows, ruffles, ribbons, lace and other frills. Some of the looks were stained with large splotches of paint. Layers of fine leather overlapped each other, creating volume and movement. Huge leather roses embroidered with pearls decorated a coat. Some of the details were extremely evocative, like the chains and barbed wire prints on certain leather dresses, in one of which a series of zips created a yoke structure.

The models wearing these extravagant outfits were coiffed with huge black or red wigs, like 18th century noblewomen and courtesans in pure Marie Antoinette style. As they trod the runway, they paused before sashaying and whirling around. From start to finish, the show was accompanied by two famous Beethoven piano sonatas, the Moonlight sonata and opus 111. The melody was both angry and solemn, underlining Kawakubo’s intent.

It isn’t the first time that Kawakubo has set a collection in this era. For example, she developed the Fall/Winter 2016-17 collection around the theme of “18th century punks.”

Kei Ninomiya goes for colour at Noir

Kei Ninomiya too featured a series of spectacular three-dimensional looks for his label Noir. But he mostly eschewed his habitual black palette, which he used for only a handful of outfits, instead studying the properties of colour and light.

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Ninomiya has explored optical effects and reflecting materials, viewing his creations as if through a prism, refracting the light in all the colours of the rainbow.
 
A number of fairy-tale looks featured shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple, like the cocooning tops and skirts made in taffeta feathers, and the tunic woven in a harmonious melange of small coloured plastic bands. Ninomiya used the same hues to create a cascade of little cut-out flowers which he assembled into delicate camouflage dresses, and into large necklaces made of small PVC squares, overlaid like a harness over dresses and coats in quilted olive-green satin.
 
He played with primary colours to create cheerful, brightly coloured looks using interwoven scoubidou string, or resorted to the same plastic string to make flowers that he stitched amidst other white tulle flowers in dresses and corsets that had the lightweight feel of clouds. Multi-coloured rosettes cut from transparent plastic sheets were used to make capes and dresses remindful of a Gothic cathedral’s stained-glass windows.
 
For his grand finale, Ninomiya created a mini cape covering the entire head and face, and a glimmering dress made with crystals arranged as prisms. Iridescent rainbow hues glimmered within them, changing colour according to the way the stones captured the light, or depending on the colour of the garment beneath them. For example, a white t-shirt emitted a pink and blue glow, which morphed into yellow, green and orange over black shorts. It was poetic and magical.