Junya Watanabe MAN SS27: Rewriting the codes of bling
Junya Watanabe titled his Spring/Summer 2027 collection BLING BLING BLING, but its excess was never as simple as shine. Tailoring collided with tracksuits, bouclé met workwear, and familiar uniforms were cut apart and rebuilt through an unusually dense network of collaborations. Baseball caps loaded with chains, jewels and coins pushed the idea to its loudest extreme, while Kappa logos, altered Levi’s, Needles hybrids and unexpected pieces of footwear turned recognisable status symbols into something harder to categorise. Elegance, utility and street culture did not alternate, instead they were forced to occupy the same body.
Photographed in black and white by Jonathan Chandi, the collection loses none of its noise. Instead, the monochrome images sharpen its construction, silhouettes and collisions, revealing the discipline beneath Watanabe’s overload, and the precision required to make too much feel completely intentional.
