Making Magnificence From the Mundane
Review of Junya Watanabe Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Everyday Extraordinary, Unconventional objects, Fashion as Art
The elusiveness of Junya Watanabe only makes his brand proposition all the more compelling. In the absence of the designer appearing at the end of his runway post-show, or the traditional press scrum with its demands of collection references and seasonal inspirations, it is left to each individual who takes a vested interest in the brand to decipher what they witness on the runway each season.
If you were to take fashion as an art form, then Watanabe’s work speak for itself. Whether that be recontextualising everyday found objects, turning the body into a cubist form or adorning it in a jacket made entirely from wigs. The designers approach will be different every season and there is nothing to do but expect the unexpected and prepare to be awed.
Affectionally known as Comme day – both Junya Watanabe and Comme des Garçons bookend it, with Noi Kei Ninomiya in-between – the shows from the CDG label of brands are consistently oversubscribed and often standing room only. This season, Watanabe referred to the concept for the spring collection as “extraordinary art born from the everyday”, taking, as he put it “ready-made items – objects originally intended for specific purposes—as one of the materials ”, this manifested in a slow procession of models with said ‘objects’ gathered in clusters around the body, either stitched to shoulders, affixed to multiple wire hangers, or caught within the trappings of a pair of opaque stockings. These are ideas ahead of their time, but still they will filter their way through to the more commercial end of ready-to-wear within a few years. Take the patchwork slip dresses, polka dots, and collaged lingerie – a version of which was last seen at Balenciaga’s fall 2024 show to lesser effect.
Watanabe’s work often defies explanation (although his menswear is more ‘conventional’), yet what we were gifted with today was the designers own version of a salon show with each model carrying a card with one descriptive sentence – ‘Dress with straw hats’, ‘Stockings and Rubber Boots’ – and look 5’s card, which simply read ‘Parasols’, did not do justice to the innovative construction techniques it takes to sew three parasols into a cotton sun dress and hook their handles just so, to enable the wearer to walk unhindered! Nevertheless the designers recontextualizing provided an unconventional way to view everyday items, this is how the mundane (plastic cutlery, boxing gloves, and even straw hats) becomes magnificent.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
Extraordinary art born from the everyday. I took a different approach to making clothes than before. By treating ready-made items—objects originally intended for specific purposes—as one of the materials, I recontextualized them and explored forms that could never be achieved through conventional methods.
Junya Watanabe, Creative Director, Junya Watanabe
THE WRAP UP
Junya Watanabe’s Spring 2026 collection was a reminder that fashion’s language can speak beyond the basic. Working from the idea of “extraordinary art born from the everyday,” he transformed the mundane into the magnificent — parasols into sun dresses, stockings into sculpture, cutlery into couture. The show unfolded with each look an invitation to see the familiar in a new light as new meanings for the objects we are surrounded with everyday were reconstructed, layered, and ultimately Watanabe-ised.
