Junya Watanabe and Comme des Garçons

For the second day in a row, two key Asian brands, Junya Watanabe and Comme des Garçons, showed major collections, both in the same gutted space on Boulevard Haussmann.

Junya Watanabe experiences and talks

One of the great fashion designers, and the most taciturn of creators, is Junya Watanabe, who on Friday not only presented a memorable experimental collection, but even talked about it.

Junya is known for his love of combining British and Western tailoring with offbeat impulses. And he did it again in this show, with a remarkable series of patchwork and overprint tuxedos. The glamor of Hollywood took a turn; Elegant country mansion driven through a blender. Every look, well, looked great.

“Trying to explore something new through elements that already existed, like denim and patchwork,” Junya explained after the show in a rubble-filled backstage.

A show that starred a platoon in tuxedos; mosaic fantasies; faded brocade glories; tartan inserts; aged brocades; Old ripped jeans, but all finished with impeccable satin collars.

“It's not that I like tuxedos, but that they represent a great way to express unlikely materials like recycled denim,” Watanabe explained.

Changing clothes at the end, Junya showed off a rock band in black t-shirts (Black Sabbath, AC/DC) that were fun and finished with Italian silk scarves. They felt like an afterthought.

But, if the defining element in a well-dressed man's wardrobe in the mid-2020s is the unconventional tuxedo, which it is. So the best you can hope to acquire is one from Junya Watanabe.

Comme des Garçons: mash in a destroyed Paris building

Like Junya, Rei Kawakubo, founder and designer of Comme des Garçons, is certainly sibylline. But if she loves silence and rarely speaks backstage, her clothes have a lot to say. Just like this season, where her amalgamation of eras, fabrics, techniques and fabrics left her audience quite spellbound.

See catwalk

A parade that led to a wonderful finale: a quintet of mesh frock coats inside which was a disorderly display of fashion remains. Depending on the mood: pieces of burlap, pieces of linen and yards of satin. A wonderful dandy vision of a surreal rock star that you had to love.

With Pharrell Williams, his wife and son sitting front row, Kawakubo wowed with a tremendous sartorial mix opening. The coat of a Russian boyar interacting with an Edwardian undertaker; a Board of Directors lawyer with scalloped hem trains blending into a matinee idol tuxedo. A Renaissance inquisitor meets a lawyer from the High Court in London.

Historical and a bit hysterical, but always very dynamic.

Backed by a churning industrial rock soundtrack, you'll lead with a cast sporting the week's most extravagant wigs: skullcaps; Mohicans and berets, all made with plastic chips, in a children's comic palette.

It's been 45 years since Rei Kawakubo named her brand after a line from a song by Françoise Hardy, the late great singer who passed away last week.

However, after four decades parading in Paris, Rei and Comme des Garçons remain the most unique vision of men's fashion.