March 9, 2025 |
The riotous creativity of Junya Watanabe has always been fed by the designer’s superb taste in music. His past collections have featured band tees from the likes of The Who and The Rolling Stones and have served as sartorial love letters to his heroes, whether it was Debbie Harry or Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay. This season he turned his attention the legendary Jimi Hendrix, a long-time idol of Watanabe’s. After the release of last year’s Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, a deluxe box set featuring 38 unreleased Hendrix tracks recorded just before the musician’s untimely death, Watanabe was transported back to his youth when he first began designing over 30 years ago.
Throughout, Hendrix’s presence could be felt in drainpipe leather trousers that flared out at the ankle, paired with excellent, faux croc boots. Like Hendrix, who shot rock into a psychedelic new stratosphere, Watanabe’s clothes are often otherworldly, and his tops made from wigs Frankensteined together were built for the future. Speaking of future, the forward-thinking artists of the Cubism movement could be felt in Watanabe’s excellent leather jackets that erupted into spongy spikes or ginormous cubes; a similar, experimental bent was applied to classic trench coats, that glitched into abstract, caged silhouettes. These are brilliant clothes not for the faint hearted.
Photography by Christina Fragkou.
