At first glance the cuts and fabrics of Junya Watanabe’s 2012-2013 winter collection call up images of the everyday male wardrobe at its most rigorous and monotonous. Wool pinstripes, tweed overcheck, diamond patterns, suits and coats bring to mind harsh, misogynistic environments rampant with white collars.

But the well-known Japanese designer, still produced by Comme des Garçons, who became famous for his daring reworking of old industrial materials, certainly loses nothing of the visionary cyber imagery, built around a detailed Gibson and Sterling setting . The clothes always reveal their purely evocative context to more attentive observers, a collective reference to systematic subversion.

The pinstripe provides an unequivocally feminine silhouette, and the men’s pants fit into bold outwear applications usually reserved for the other hemisphere; the rigorous tweed is cut with indulgent velvet devoré, pleated pants and the typical salia wool of men’s suits are proposed as minimalist wear or as a draping cassock. And when this reassuring femininity comes to the forefront, clothed in flowing ancient fantasies of the past, reality reveals it to be merely a wrapping, apron or in metamorphosis with a far more determined basic attire.

It is an acrobatic and sensitive attack on patriarchal power, ridiculed by the eccentric, casual parade of determined women, whose colourful and bizarre intellectual horizons place them out of reach.

Now discover the F/W 2012-2013 Junya Watanabe’s collection on IVO MILAN!

Whilst the so-called Japanese school is more inclined to look at the artistic potential of clothing, Chitose brings it back to its original function of items that must adapt and be compatible with the various needs of everyday life. This absolutely concrete and practical dimension underlines the spaces and times of our social life and tries to find a solution for different circumstances. For this purpose, Chitose employs the classic formal schemes of ordinary, mainly Western clothing, but does not renounce the process of dividing it up and putting it back together, by applying the poetic delicacy that he acquired in his work environment.

In this original mixture of East and West, sheath dresses can be found, along with trench coats, blazers and also an explicit tribute to Chanel, that at the same time is a celebration of an eternal feminine, of an original elegance.

Without being trapped by boring and regular monotony, Sacai breaks the rhythm by introducing carefully chosen devices that systematically betray what our eyes were expecting: rough juxtapositions of fabrics; simple points of junctions between different prints and materials; unexpected gatherings or layers that are camouflaged by the apparent predictability of the forms.

In the delicate balance between innovation and repetition, what prevails is an impeccable, refined and essential female silhouette.