from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/magazine/09style.html
Quiet Riot
Photographs by WILLY VANDERPERRE
Text by CATHY HORYN
Published: July 9, 2006
Trying to uncork the illuminations of the designer Junya Watanabe will leave you feeling flat. Here's a snippet from a recent, uh, interview in Paris, where he shows his collections for men and women. Junya, what do you do in your spare time? "Probably the same things you do in your spare time." (Mental picture: Junya sorting laundry, arranging his springtime flower box.. . .) What was the last movie you saw? "Probably something I saw on an airplane." (No mental picture available.) Junya, your clothes seem very American in their outlook. You've done collections around the military and the Wild West, for instance. Have you traveled a lot in the United States? "I've visited Honolulu and New York." Say no more!
Maybe it's a guy thing, this reluctance to explain his motives. Few designers, in any case, are more sensitive to the basic concern of young men, which is to look cool. If Watanabe's women's collections tend to display his inventive cutting (he began his career as a pattern maker for Rei Kawakubo, whose Tokyo-based company, Comme des Garçons, gave him his own label in 1992), his men's clothes get their credibility from the world of work and sports. For a while now he has been collaborating with companies like Carhartt, Moncler and Ben Sherman, labels that were decidedly unhip until some kid started wearing their clothes in the street. Watanabe's designs seldom strain the original concept. That's his genius as a men's wear designer. This past winter, in a collection that acknowledged the old-school style favored by snowboarders, he offered Moncler down vests in washed Donegal tweed. Perfect for wearing under your blazer — if you could get your hands on one.
The thing is, Watanabe does his homework and then he lets his creative eye take over. When he showed his spring collection of engineer-striped denim and Dickies and Pointer Brand workwear, the models wore overbright Lacoste polo shirts and Jack Purcell sneakers, and you thought, What's up with this? But the cut of the narrow, droopy jeans was just right, the attitude recognizably masculine. I've never heard so many men in the front row say with relief, "Thank God, something to wear."
Quiet Riot
Photographs by WILLY VANDERPERRE
Text by CATHY HORYN
Published: July 9, 2006
Trying to uncork the illuminations of the designer Junya Watanabe will leave you feeling flat. Here's a snippet from a recent, uh, interview in Paris, where he shows his collections for men and women. Junya, what do you do in your spare time? "Probably the same things you do in your spare time." (Mental picture: Junya sorting laundry, arranging his springtime flower box.. . .) What was the last movie you saw? "Probably something I saw on an airplane." (No mental picture available.) Junya, your clothes seem very American in their outlook. You've done collections around the military and the Wild West, for instance. Have you traveled a lot in the United States? "I've visited Honolulu and New York." Say no more!
Maybe it's a guy thing, this reluctance to explain his motives. Few designers, in any case, are more sensitive to the basic concern of young men, which is to look cool. If Watanabe's women's collections tend to display his inventive cutting (he began his career as a pattern maker for Rei Kawakubo, whose Tokyo-based company, Comme des Garçons, gave him his own label in 1992), his men's clothes get their credibility from the world of work and sports. For a while now he has been collaborating with companies like Carhartt, Moncler and Ben Sherman, labels that were decidedly unhip until some kid started wearing their clothes in the street. Watanabe's designs seldom strain the original concept. That's his genius as a men's wear designer. This past winter, in a collection that acknowledged the old-school style favored by snowboarders, he offered Moncler down vests in washed Donegal tweed. Perfect for wearing under your blazer — if you could get your hands on one.
The thing is, Watanabe does his homework and then he lets his creative eye take over. When he showed his spring collection of engineer-striped denim and Dickies and Pointer Brand workwear, the models wore overbright Lacoste polo shirts and Jack Purcell sneakers, and you thought, What's up with this? But the cut of the narrow, droopy jeans was just right, the attitude recognizably masculine. I've never heard so many men in the front row say with relief, "Thank God, something to wear."
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