March 9, 2026 |
Waste not, want not. Junya Watanabe titled his AW26 collection, The Art of Assemblage Couture, taking throw-away elements, then elevating them through craft, into things of surprising beauty.
Old biker jackets, gloves and fragments of helmets, as well as heavy straps, scraps of fabric and protective pads and panels were recomposed into a series of striking bricolage gowns.
Watanabe presented it with a layer of theatre. Working with movement director Pat Boguslawski, he instructed his models, including Irina Shayk and couture favourite Maggie Maurer, to stalk the catwalk, vamping and throwing arch poses. With their hair gelled into retro kiss curls and Marcel waves, and their feline eyeliner running down their cheeks like tears, they looked like broken silent screen stars.
It read like a meditation on glamour and beauty, as well as the importance of circularity in fashion, with the designer suggesting that beauty can be created with the most mundane objects – if you know how.
This designer is the King Midas of up-cycling. The designer described his collaging approach as a, “form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional notions of dressmaking. Through the direct presentation of raw materials, this approach expresses the surrounding social environment.”
There were so many ingenious, I-can’t-believe-my-eyes moments. Was that really a gown made from the metallic foil blankets given to marathon runners at the finish line? Stiletto boots became the sleeves and back panel of a swing-jacket. One model wore a stole made from stuffed animal toys. A pair of printed 1950s curtains looked like they’d been whipped off the window and attached to the back of one look to form a sweeping train. The front of that look had a bodice made from wooden set squares, a prize rosette and a glittery portrait of Marilyn Monroe. A strip of signage, worn across the body like a beauty queen’s sash read in Spanish: “May peace prevail in the world”.
Photography by Christina Fragkou.
