i saw a mention of junya watanabe's spring 2009 collection via a post on sea of shoes...and after taking a peep at his whole upcoming kit and kaboodle on style.com, i'm smitten. if you know me, you know i'm not big on posting photos of runway shows or collections (because i don't generally follow any trends, and don't pay attention to too many designers as a rule), but sometimes, one has to make exceptions. :)

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so, on that note, i'll indulge and muse a bit.
junya's most current collection appeals to me for the following (personal) reasons:
-i've had a love affair with all things aesthetically african for some time now, particularly african textiles, and even more particularly, ghana's famous wax prints. i adore the unapologetically bright, saturated colors and graphic prints that adorn such textiles...they speak directly to my own aesthetic tastes and what i tend to wear as a general rule. junya's concocted his own version of these idiosyncratic wax prints, thus making what influenced him his own, so to speak.
-i have long a soft spot in my heart for destroyed and restyled denims, like the ruffled edwardian-esque skirts and jackets in junya's most recent collection. apparently he's known for that sort of thing: taking things apart, and putting them back together again in innovative ways. i've been a fan of similar restyled denims since at least the late 1990s, when jean-skirts (skirts made from restyling a pair of jeans) were a ragingly popular retro trend (they were originally popular in the late 1960s/early 1970s). i made piles and piles of varied skirts out of jeans and pants, and once made this denim patchwork skirt out of a pile of varied denim jeans i found at the racks of my then local thrifts. makes me want to do up another skirt like the one in the above link again, perhaps using brightly colored or acid wash denim instead...or play around with remixing denim again. (when i can find the time (again)! hahaHA!)
-there's something really over the top and sort of regal about those organic headdresses worn by the models in junya's spring 2009 show, they are almost like crazy, ginormous cocktail hats. and i find that appealing, the extreme scale of them, the inventive use of natural materials. at the same time they kind of evoke a feeling of peasantry, of village life...
-and hello, in junya's world (and mine), dresses and skirts over jeans still reign. i grab on to something, i don't let go... :)