JUNYA WATANABE MAN FALL WINTER 2017/18 COLLECTION PARIS

By Crash redaction

JUNYA WATANABE MEN’S COLLABORATION WITH THE NORTH FACE FOR FALL-WINTER 2017/18

Junya Watanabe reinvents itself every season. Indeed, each new collection is carefully planned out around a central theme. For his Junya Watanabe Men’s Fall-Winter 2017/18 collection, the Japanese designer is launching a collaboration with extreme sports brand The North Face to create a more sportier collection than ever before. Nothing is left to chance in this collection: with hip hop music blaring, the first model carried a large black duffel bag by The North Face and dumped it in front of a stack of speakers.

Watanabe embarks on this trend of nineties sportswear, which continues to inspire a wave of new and young designers – so much so that one need no longer call it « nineties » as the trend has become so contemporary.

Nevertheless, it does not renounce its trademark – and this is what marks the real strength of this collection. It does not try to mimic a trend, but instead it appropriates and juxtaposes it. The collection embodies a reflection around the issue of creating straight cuts while privileging fluid and hazardous cuts specific to the streetwear and snowboarder wardrobe. Finally, Watanabe does not forsake either his focus on patchwork, or his enthusiasm for juxtaposing several colors and materials on denim. So a jacket sees scarlet red contrasting with camel, while suede mismatches with canvas. By creating a symmetry in colors, overlapping materials, and an optical effect, it adds a more technical quality to sportswear, while creating a distinction within the hubbub of the saturated obsession with sportswear.

Photos © Elise Toidé for Crash Magazine

Written by Lisa Tomasi