All Blinged Out
Review of Junya Watanabe Spring 2027 Men’s Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
Bling, as a slang word for jewellery, was used throughout the 2000s and was forever immortalised into the lexicon of pop culture through its official entry into the Oxford English dictionary in 2002. Credited with being the first to commit the term to wax, rapper Lil Wayne of the Cash Money crew didn’t officially invent the term, that honour goes to rapper B.G. Yet, despite the global success of the word neither benefitted financially from its popularity as neither thought to trademark it.
The term ‘Bling, Bling’ came to define an era of ostentatious wealth and maximalism that coincided with the rise of The Kardashians, hip hop finally going mainstream and dominating the airwaves, and fashion’s tumultuous love affair with streetwear culture. A cultural point in time that was revived by Junya Watanabe for his spring 2027 collection that brought together and collided several youth culture touchpoints in a collection titled ‘Bling Bling Bling.’
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Track Stars, Maximalisms Return, Bling on Bling
This was the season of the tracksuit for Junya Watanabe. Reviving, and yes, even refreshing the often-derided closet staple which defies every attempt to formalise. Despite many attempts to achieve this feat through sharp cuts, embellishment or elegant fabrics, the tracksuit remains a pillar for casual connoisseurs.
Colourful tracksuits – also seen at Sarah Burton’s menswear debut for Givenchy – look back to both the 1980s when you were not considered ‘Fresh’ without a clean pair of sneakers and an Adidas tracksuit (see Run DMC and LL Cool J for reference), before it found a home again in British football terrace culture, where the Italian sportswear brand Kappa became an almost de-facto uniform for supporters of the beautiful game. The tracksuit found fame again through the Cool Brittania movement of the 1990s and was championed by the likes of Sporty Spice and Damon Albarn of Blur.
Today they became the main attraction within a collection that revived the two piece through collaborations with Kappa and Needles, splicing it with denim and trimming it with tweed. It may still seem like a step to far on the nineties nostalgia train for some, but in the same way that retro 1970s-style sneakers have become the dominant silhouette for Adidas and Puma, the tracksuit could see a return to the zeitgeist.
In amongst the Chav meets Chad co-ords was a very smart update of the Junya x Carhartt collaboration. A take on the classic Chanel-style boxy jacket, styled with a set of pearls, worked so well that you have to wonder why no other designer had thought of it prior to today. It became the opener for a section focussed on the prep and pomp that the designer is known for, as collegiate-coded button-downs became the foundation for patchworked denim, contrast-colour knits and reworked tailoring. Several of the deconstructed tailored pieces looked so intricately done that you have to wonder if the brands pattern cutter doesn’t work in four dimensions.
This journey led Watanabe to pile on the ‘Bling’ as strings of pearls, brooches and gold chains fought for space around necks and across the necessary finishing detail that is the baseball cap – a collaboration with ‘Cap Artist’ Kota Okuda.
THE WRAP UP
There have been many conversations around a return to maximalism, and with his spring 2027 offering next season has been set out as an embrace of a nostalgia coded trip back to when streetwear was a uniform, and ‘Bling’ was a byword for shining without apology.
