Junya Watanabe S/S 2020 Paris Fashion Week Women's

Mood board: In the field of fashion consumption, we’re being urged to consider our wardrobe choices with even more environmentally sensitivity. Brands that have been cultivating a specific vision for decades, eluding trends and passing tastes, have particular provenance. Junya Watanabe – tailoring’s leading punk – is renowned for his spliced and deconstructed take on classic silhouettes like leather jackets and suiting, taking for S/S 2020, the beige trench coat, and turning it into something new, like a voluminous skirt a ball gown, or razor sharp cape, or splicing its buckled and buttoned boob tube form onto a white shirt. Watanabe paired these astonishingly constructed garments with flashes of neon, from skinny cap-sleeve t-shirts to sporty leggings. He silhouettes had a relaxed 1980s élan.
Team work: Watanabe collaborated with Spanish graffiti artist Bicicleta Sem Freio and Brazilian design collective Bicicleta Sem Freio on a series of graphic, prismatic prints which featured on leggings and technical skins.
Finishing touches: Alongside spiked chokers, models sported chunky pearl necklaces. Ladylike yes, but these accessories also had a punky DIY charm, with pearl beads appearing as if they’d been wrapped in pieces of colourful foil.
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
Here’s what to order (and admire) at Carbone London
New York’s favourite, and buzziest, Italian restaurant arrives in the British capital, marking the brand’s first expansion into Europe
-
Griffin Frazen on conceiving the cinematic runway sets for New York label Khaite: ‘If people feel moved we’ve succeeded’
The architectural designer – who helped conceive the sets for ‘The Brutalist’ – collaborates with his wife Catherine Holstein on the scenography for her Khaite runway shows, the latest of which took place in NYFW this past weekend
-
How to travel meaningfully in an increasingly generic world
Lauren Ho explores the need for resonance, not reach, in the way we choose to make journeys of discovery
-
What the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to at fashion week, from blockbuster debuts to rising stars
The Wallpaper* style team pick their highlights from the upcoming fashion month, a definitive season as the industry’s major players start their latest chapters, beginning in New York tomorrow
-
How Bureau Betak transformed the runway show: ‘Our currency is emotion and memory’
Pioneering production company Bureau Betak has masterminded some of the most inspiring runway sets of the last 30 years, dazzling both real-life guests and an ever-growing virtual global audience. Hugo Macdonald meets the people behind the magic
-
‘Never copy the past’: how Nicolas Di Felice is taking Courrèges into the future
At Courrèges, artistic director Nicolas Di Felice is marrying radical thinking, raving and reinterpreted minimalist codes to give the French fashion house a new dynamism. Hannah Tindle heads to Paris to meet the designer
-
Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future
The Belgian designer made his debut for the house last night with a collection that looked towards medieval decoration for a new expression of opulence
-
Art meets perfume in cross-disciplinary fragrance series Nez 1+1
Talents from film and fragrance come together to create Ansongo, the latest scent resulting from a creative matchmaking project by perfume revue Nez
-
Haute Couture Week A/W 2025: what to expect
Five moments to look out for at Haute Couture Week A/W 2025 in Paris (starting Monday 7 July), from Glenn Martens’ debut for Maison Margiela to Demna’s Balenciaga swansong. Plus, ‘new beginnings’ from JW Anderson
-
The collections you might have missed this S/S 2026 menswear season
Between the headliners in Paris, Milan and Florence, a few off-schedule displays are deserving of honourable mention – from Martine Rose’s sexually-charged portrait of Kensington Market to Sander Lak’s appointment-only namesake debut
-
‘They gave me carte blanche to do what I want’: Paul Kooiker photographs the students of Gerrit Rietveld Academie for Acne Studios
Heralding the launch of a new permanent gallery from fashion label Acne Studios, the celebrated Dutch photographer’s new body of work praises the bravery of ‘people who choose to go to an art school at a time like this’