Junya Watanabe: Avant Garde

     Japanese avant garde is fascinating to me. The term avant garde in fashion means "New or experimental ideas" and can be very bizarre looking. Avant garde is different from Parisan haute couture because haute couture in fashion means high quality designed pieces of clothing made by famous fashion houses for clients(though it is a little more complicated than this definition if you can believe it), while avant garde are abstract fashion pieces.
     Junya Watanabe is a perfect example for creating Japanese avant garde. This designer is one of my favorites because he is so... How do you put it, unique. Although, the word unique is gentle, because his work is truly outlandish. Watanabe is known for his incredible tailoring skills, due to the fact that he trained under Rei Kawakubo who is the head of Comme Des Garcons. Much of his designs make my head spin, and I wonder how in the world did you come up with that?! For one of his 2015 collections he surprised me with the brightest, loudest pieces of clothing I have seen from him. From what it looked like, all of the clothing(if you can call it clothing) was made of overlapping plastic poka dots. Another one of his collections he seemed to combine somehow both tribal and goth, making an interesting collection full of ratty braids and spiked shoes. In 2010 he experimented with draping cloth and made a slightly disturbing scene of alien-looking models. Watanabe's work is hard to describe, but he himself describes his work as "Anti. Anarchy. Army." Whatever that means. No one really knows what his work really is about, which suits him just fine. "You can interpret my work as you wish." Junya Watanabe says.