I was washed up in Brooklyn around 2009.
Physically, I was in Paris, attending the Junya Watanabe fashion show. But spiritually? Oh boy, I was in Williamsburg during the Obama era.
They were the models in their husky Filson jackets, the buffalo checks, the tan cloth bags, the Mondo hiking boots and the dark-wash cuffed jeans.
But above all, it was the feathered beards of the mountain men. I could almost smell the beard oil. I might as well have gotten my hair cut at an $80 barbershop on Driggs Avenue while listening to Arcade Fire and drinking an IPA. Sex with wood, folks, is back.
At least in the hands of Mr. Watanabe. The designer, part of the extensive universe of Comme des Garçons, is a special force. So far he is the only designer in Paris who looks for inspiration in our recent hipster past.
Still, it was more than a little disorienting to see the ghosts of the ‘aughts Heritage Movement’ – a wave that saw city men longing for good old outdoor essentials like raw denim, Barbour jackets and Filson cruiser jackets – so quickly came to visit us again. Had it been 15 years ago, this collection would have received wall-to-wall attention on “#menswear” blogs like A Continuous Lean. Fashion trends circle quickly, but really? So fast?
Backstage, Mr. Watanabe threw some cold Pacific Northwest water on this idea. Yes, he was familiar with the heritage wave that emerged in America twenty years ago. There was a similar movement in Japan, he said through a translator.
But that had “nothing to do with this” show.
Instead, Mr. Watanabe said, this collection was a meditation on how much he revered the four-pocket Filson Mackinaw Cruiser, a hip-length coat originally patented by the American clothing manufacturer in 1914.
He said he “shared the classic, good old workwear with Filson,” with whom he collaborated on the collection.
Share, yes. But also rethink. Every model in the 41-look show wore a distorted image of a Mackinaw. They were reconstructed, deconstructed, lengthened into a parka, Frankensteined into a shearling, shaved into a blazer-like thing, fitted with a pumpkin-orange back panel and worn over another panel. Mackinaw. The only thing missing was a Mackinaw mutated into a jumpsuit.
Since this is a utilitarian design associated with loggers and hunters, it was possible to wonder whether Mr. Watanabe was making a grand statement about returning to nature in the face of the attacks of artificial intelligence and the tech oligarchs who conquer the world? After all, the first heritage movement came in response to the boom in online startups, when men began to long for something analog, something they could feel with their hands, something they could treat like a tool.
Backstage, however, Mr. Watanabe was in no mood to put big ideas on this collection. The Filson jacket “has been around for a long time,” he said, quelling further questions about this temporary trend or that.
Still, toward the end of the show, the words “I see a change emerging” came through on the soundtrack. In my eyes, it wasn’t a change that Mr. Watanabe was offering, but a return, because on Friday morning the heritage hipster could once again appear on the horizon.
