We always underlined the Junya Watanabe’s peculiar interpretative ability in establishing, in the form of dress, the predominant stresses of our time. Post-modern, cyber-punk, tailor-philosopher of an age crossed by very fast transformations, where, from collection to collection, plastics and brand new materials, parts of abandoned industrial landscapes, occurred, to give shape to his personal metabolization and to his interpretation of the contemporaneity.

With the Spring / Summer 2017 is the fierce spirit of the Japanese designer, produced by Comme des Garçons Maison, to manifest itself in the sunny morning walkway of Palais du Tokyo. Deafening hard-rock music accompanies the proud and hurried pace of bewildering metropolitan warriors, evidently intolerant towards an increasingly thorny and demanding present, exceedingly conformist.

To reinforce the rhythm are the classical decorative elements of the punk movement: crests and other disheveled and colorful hairstyles, tattered leggings and hyper-skimpy mini-skirts.

Photo by Vogue

Photo by Vogue

Photo by Vogue

But the Watanabe quat is not slavish and nostalgic, but provocative and pungent. The cue becomes an opportunity to continue with origami exercises, the textiles module is pyramidal, the threatening metal edges of studs and piercings gain lightness and grace in organza processing, up to the extremes such as a stellar westcoat, not by chance pale pink , returning in serious synthetic leather bags and accessories.

The oscillation between the opposite poles: serious and mild, warlike and docile, composes and articulates the collection. On one side the impetus and vigor of oversize volumes, such as sweatshirts, parca and t-shirt and on the other side the feminine silhouette clearly defined by unexpected draperies, generated by semi-invisible seams, floral bouquet and more accommodating fabrics, like organza and georgette.

Against all odds and reference, the two extremes coexist in a new aesthetic balance, where the mutual control and enhancement generates the most unexpected and unlikely punk expression, poetry!

Find more regarding IVO MILAN Radical Fashion‘s choice directly from Place Vendôme – Paris show-room:

While it is now imminent the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute in New York, dedicated to the work of  Rei Kawakubo’s – Comme des Garçons and curated by Andrew Bolton (it will be inaugurate on 4^th of May), the famous online magazine, AnOther, reveals in a long article the showroom of the well know Japanese Maison, the anti-fashion temple par excellence.

Photo by AnOtherMag

A good cue for leading you inside with our video shooting of the Spring/Summer of 2017. Rare outstanding material, a concession obtained with a long collaboration and with a peculiar organization of the store activity, with preparation, archival and historical memory and, above all, with an approach to new proposals of recipients otherwise poorly assisted by scarce communication on this kind of clothing.

For some years now Rei Kawakubo uses the catwalk as the sheet music upon which composes the ceremony of her collections. No more suggestions on what to wear during the season, but philosophical insights translated into highly complex textile forms, from which to draw clues on fabrics and weights that will make up the seasonal assortment. The designer explores and then wraps the spirit of time presenting it to a tense audience with the sacrifice of an increasingly less accessible and intelligible comprehension but, in its abstract distance, more and more poetic and theatrical.

Photo by Crash

In the Place Vendôme space, the bulky shapes resize, becoming viable clothing, which does not deny the feminine silhouette with the excesses promised in the fashion show. The camouflage is wearable in the asymmetries of jackets and t-shirts. The disturbing paddings for the summer translate into irregular folds, stylistic solutions that enhance the movement of the garments or decorative elements for an easier use and composition.

The selection takes place in a space stolen to huge sequenced installations, works first withheld from scene, then immersed in the soundtrack which, looped for days, it evokes and reinforces the suggestions of the recent stage show.