Junya Watanabe..

• ·      Born in Fukushima, Japan in 1961
• ·       He went on to attend Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, graduating in 1984.
• ·       He began his apprenticeship at Comme des Garcons, the company run by legendary Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, as a patternmaker.
• ·       In 1987, he was promoted to chief designer of Tricot knitwear line and then moved on to design for the Comme Des Garcons Homme line.
• ·       in 1992, he has worked under his own name as part of Comme des Garcons.
• ·       He started his own line under the Comme Des Garcons name called ‘Junya Watanabe Comme Des Garcons’ in 1993 and began showing in Paris that same year.
• ·       In 1994, Junya Watanable launched his own label. A few days after his own collection, he presented the collection for his friend Rei Kawakubo.
• ·       His designs do reflect the principles of his mentor Kawakubo, but he takes a personal approach to his garments.
• ·       He gives his clothes an irregular touch through random tucking and pleating or ruching.
• ·       Glamour, sound and colour are notably absent from his design shows, and he keeps a vast distance between his models walking on the catwalk, so that the viewers can give full attention to each design as it appears.
• ·       In 1995, his collection was all boiled wool and black leather with tattoos on the models
• ·       In 1997 he put his own stamp on florals, models seemingly cocooned in Japanese style prettiness but their sculptural half-dresses were conventional from the front and cut away at the back to reveal baggy embroidered trousers. Every outfit was crowned with a folded turban-style wig.
• ·       In 1999, he has given cape sleeves and an uneven hemline to a white Indian cotton multi-layered dress and the model said that suddenly when worn, all the fabric makes sense and it feels much different on a body than when it is seen on a hanger.
• ·       He is particularly interested in synthetic and technologically advanced textiles and fabrics as found in his spring/summer 2001 line but also uses more traditional materials such as cotton in his spring/summer 2003 collection.

• ·      Watanabe is often considered to be a ‘techno couture’ designer, creating unusually structured clothes out of modern, technical materials.

Junya Watanabe Collection timeline from 2002. 

(Taken from vogue UK website)