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Junya Watanabe

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PARIS, October 2, 2010
By Tim Blanks
When he showed stripes in his Spring collection for men, Junya Watanabe said that was what he felt like wearing next summer, and the show was correspondingly no more complicated than that. Stripes were also the dominant motif in his women's show today, and there was an equal lack of complication in clothes that were a sporty, summery counterpart to the menswear—maybe transported a century or so earlier to the beach in Biarritz. The marine connection was explicit in the nautical motifs on silken scarf-printed smocks and sailor tops. There were echoes of Edwardian bathing costumes—and maybe even antique tennis gear—in striped leggings under long, drop-waisted dresses. The Edwardiana that underlies so much Japanese fashion was also palpable in the proportions: long over longer. But Junya emphasized the lightness of the layering with coats cut from sheer nylon and polyester.

In a Paris season where the word "feminine" is being bandied around with gay abandon, this was as pretty and feminine a collection as Watanabe has offered. Which is perhaps why, by way of contrast, he called on hairdresser Katsuya Kamo to perform some of his alien magic above the neckline. The models wore toxic-colored wigs under their squashy governess' hats, and their faces were obscured by masks they held in place with a bit between their teeth. "Tokyo doll" was the designer's own description for the effect he was after with his collection, but these dolls hadn't had their faces painted in yet, and there were odd moments when the combination of mask and stripe made you think prisoner as much as sailor.

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