Après L’Apocalypse: Juun.J A/W 2016-17

Costume designers creating the garments for the latest sagas of dystopian films such as The Hunger Games and Divergent followed the sci-fi tradition that tended to divide the post-apocalyptic world in factions or classes defined by clothes in precise colours and shades.

The main impression left by Juun.J's A/W 2016-17 collection was that the Seoul-based designer respected this tradition. His designs were indeed at times identical, but precisely defined by a neutral palette comprising beige, white, anthracite and black, with sparkles of deep navy blues.

One of the main themes was protection, something emphasised by the opening futuristic embossed leather jackets with protective plate panels and exaggerated shoulders that called to mind the gear of rugby players and by the closing section of shearling coats and jackets characterised by outlandishly voluminous and ample silhouettes.

The genderless theme was introduced in graphic statements proclaiming not just "genderless", but also "confineless", "boundaryless" and "paradigm-less" on coats, knitwear and extra-long scarves.

In between, there were a few reinvented pieces of menswear, including rounded shouldered coats and tailored pants and a jacket camouflaged into a cape (or was that a cape camouflaged as a jacket?).

The collection also had a very fashionable mecha anime feel thanks to the skeletons of robotic dinosaurs and pinup gynoids courtesy of Hajime Sorayama hand-painted on the backs of the shearling coats and jackets (as opposed to Paolo Pedroni's illustrations on the outwerwear from the A/W 2015-16 collection). These pieces were maybe to be interpreted as cumbersome exoskeletons that swallowed the thin models wearing them rather than just as mere protective coats.

As a whole, though, this collection was a bit of a missed opportunity: Juun.J was the guest designer of the Pitti Uomo event, and, while the leather bound notebook employed for the invitation announced great things you could maybe write about in a memorable way, the collection didn't seem to add much to the designer's vocabulary, even though he could have maybe twisted his tailoring skills a bit more to create more experimental pieces.

Extra large silhouettes have indeed been one of his trademark for a while, together with his ultra-wide-leg trousers, bomber jackets with rounded sleeves and utilitarian pockets scattered on jackets and shirts. Juun.J also referenced in previous collections vintage military uniforms that were hinted at in some of the details included in this collection as well.

The designer often states in interviews that he takes inspiration from what he sees on the street, so he must have seen a lot of pre and post-apocalyptic styles recently donned by ordinary people, fashionistas and soldiers, but he seemed to have failed bringing in fresher and more innovative and unordinary elements inspired by his very ordinary models. In a way, it was a bit of a shame, especially in the aftermath of the grand "Korea Now!" exhibition at Paris' Les Arts Décoratifs.

Besides, the show didn't seem to introduce any new themes on the runway: the genderless issue is indeed becoming a parody of itself as too many of us have by now forgotten that such experiments occurred in fashion in the '70s and were defined "unisex".

Maybe Juun.J should have taken his "boundaryless" and "confineless" concepts further: he could have indeed made a more radical and political statement about the current migrations of people from conflict zones, reshifting the discourse around the debate about closing boundaries between nations and leaving them open; or he could have made a comment about the fashion industry welcoming the general public to fashion shows to create a "confineless" experience between the designer and the final consumer (mind you, it would be rather difficult with Pitti as their organisers tend to deny entrance to a show if you've pissed them off in previous seasons or if you're simply too irrelevant in their minds to mingle with the people they deem to be "relevant"…).

Juun.J claimed this collection was a vision of the wardobe of survivors in a post-chaos and post-apocalypse city: who knows, maybe his K-pop fans G-Dragon and Big Bang's Taeyang will wear the garments in a video for one of their tracks to be used by South Korea in answer to the next nuclear test announcements by North Korea (on 8th January, South Korea responded by blasting K-Pop tracks on giant loudspeakers as an answer to a suspected nuclear test conducted by its northern neighbor two days earlier). Now that would be really interesting: a sartorial weapon of dictatorship destruction.