Junya Watanabe FW26
Junya Watanabe titled his FW26 womenswear collection "The Art of Assemblage Couture" and described it as form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional dressmaking logic. The runway, staged as an imagined tango club and set to Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango," made the claim feel entirely credible.
Watanabe constructed gowns from scraps of fur, picture frames, and shiny handbags, transformed leather gloves into elbow patches, and turned stiletto boots into the sleeves and back of a cape-like jacket. Curved plastic salvaged from motorcycle helmets gave structure to corset tops and peplums. Thick black buckles and fragments of motoring gear landed on gowns made from sackcloth and gold foil. He strung stuffed animals together to create a furry stole for a long black dress with a criss-cross back. Patterned curtains, pulled apparently straight from their window frame, became the train of a dress whose bodice was assembled from broken license plates and a glittery portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
None of this read as provocation for its own sake. The materials carried weight precisely because Watanabe treated them without irony, positioning industrial wreckage and domestic debris within couture silhouettes of genuine structural ambition. The effect was aristocratic. Grandeur, it turns out, requires conviction more than expense. Irina Shayk opened the show, while couture model Maggie Maurer closed it. In between, models in kiss-curls and smeared mascara moved with the slow, deliberate drama of silent film actresses, performing choreographed alternations between rejection and flight. The soundtrack, composed by Hakushi Hasegawa and Tokutaro Hosoi for accordion, violin, and piano, matched the mood with precision — schmaltzy, melancholic, completely committed.
Hair: Eugene Souleiman (@eugenesouleiman)
Make-up: Isamaya Ffrench (@isamayaffrench)
Movement Director: Pat Boguslawski (@pat_boguslawski)
Music: Libertango / Astor Piazzola
Introduction del Angel / Astor Piazzola
Libertango / La Quartina
