The triumph of avant-garde fashion is never-ending.

Paris – Saturday was Japan Day in Paris: Junya Watanabe’s The First Thing, Noir Kei Ninomiya at noon and Comme des Garçons, The Motherhood of Motherhood, in the afternoon. There is enough breathing space between the three to absorb challenging and diverse ideas, but also to reflect on the connecting threads of Japanese fashion. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the Meiji period, the influence of Western dress left the Victorian and Edwardian formality behind. The post-World War II United Nations vocabularies—jazz, jeans, leather jackets, youth cults—then came a wave of designers who embraced all that Western jive in Japanese cultural ideals like wabi-sabi, the imperfect. and incomplete. The result is an enduring avant-garde that, fifty years after Issey Miyake’s first show in Paris, continues to provide insightful, provocative and often beautiful ripostes to the fashion orthodoxy.

Junya Watanabe’s Western pop culture mutants have been responsible for some of the most popular shows over the years, most notably from the Winter 2006 men’s collection “Travis Bickle.” For Spring 2023, London’s New Romance thought it was telegraphed by now. But if that promises an improved version of Steve Strange’s redictable detour. For the first time, there was a hint of Eugene Suleiman’s hair: a huge, spiky, florid red cocoon that immediately brought to mind the strange living creature that was Martin Dagville. Pop completists know him as the creative engine behind Sig Sig Sputnik. But it’s the junior genius who turns Sig’s Flash Gordon camp into equally exaggerated goth self-absorption: two narcissistic youth cults for the price of one.

The collection’s message was felt and applied to a variety of Levi’s pairs: You can be whatever you want, especially if that’s Siouxsie Sioux on the cover of Face in February 1982, or the kids lined up six months later to get into the Batcave, the birthplace of goth. In fact, Junya created his own club atmosphere, with the same purple color some of us remember from misguided youth. At the end of the show, the music suddenly stops and the lights go out, telling you that the clock is off. Just like those old clubs. Funny ha-ha.

Michel Gaubert’s soundtrack whipped up a fun sound bubble of Duran Duran and the Japanese band, but Junya’s outfits went much darker than that. Shoulders were sci-fi, scaled to curved capes and long drapes over laces, latex, sequins or lace, like Dracula’s brides went to a club game. Adoklam owes a huge debt to Vivienne Westwood, a creation of the Japanese modern fashion lexicon. (Actually, wherever it is in the world, fashion iconoclasm is usually owed to the royal family). It’s hard to look at plaids, chains, slits and zips, strings of pearls (Viv loves the Queen) without thinking that British culture has changed. And here it was. Junya never lost a trick. Punks, Goths and New Romantics all admired speed as a cheap and efficient high. Listed partners for this collection include McLaren, Honda and Komine, a Japanese company that makes gear for motorcycle racers. Maybe not exactly what the club kids had in mind, but go fast anyway.

Noir’s Kai Ninomiya, a former pattern maker at Comme des Garçons, comes from – or rather to – another place. He describes the new collection as “a mystical journey into the depths of the universe.” If you could imagine a designer examining their latest look through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope, that designer might be Ninomiya. Twists of dark matter flicker, vibrate and fracture, the directions of the constellations etched in clouds of quivering silver wires. The last sight is a star fairy covered in a rock of gospel star trails.

But the noir universe was also based on the ground, in collaboration with Hunter boots and ceramic headware by artist Takuro Kutata. Wabi-Sabi is the cornerstone of his work. Here, he’s served things that are a cross between dry crowns and crumbly cakes. But they gave Ninoyma’s models a truly aristocratic quality, especially when paired with a crazy-hat hairstyle that looked like she’d dragged Marie Antoinette back over the fence.

The Edwardian formality I mentioned was fixed: jackets in houndstooth, britches in Prince of Wales check, high-necked shirts, long skirts. But they were curved, closed, cornices. Unfortunately, Japanese fashion has an unknown strangeness, and Ninoyma is a very good ambassador for a foreign country.

Although he had nothing on his mentor, Rei Kawakubo. The cryptic lady has taken to detailing her latest wardrobe, and reassuringly, her announcements are backed by her designs. “A cry for the sadness in the world today” were the words that accompanied her new collection. “A sense of wanting to stand together” follows.

The twin poles of despair and hope were so hopelessly entwined in the fabric of reality that it was difficult to extract one from the other. Kawakubo has tended to shy away from controversy in her designs, allowing them to live outside of social and political commentary, but it was fascinating to see her engage more with the world. A few things stand out in this scene. One of the models was wearing a helmet or crown-like headdress, and my most talented colleague, Luke Leitch, was the virgin crowns, or krants, in which women were once buried. (Shakespeare says Hamlet’s Ophelia is in the cringe.) Another beautiful soundtrack was by Greek composer Eleni Karandrou, “Mad Max: Fury Road.“ I sat at the show and watched the beautiful young models in their flowing white canes and dresses with lace glitter in black oil skirts and protective carapaces, fabric and brocade beds with turned-up collars to dry, and I thought these are women at the end of the world, making the most of what they have and You will learn to overcome the suffering of hell. And they would win.

Therefore, the best Japanese design allows you to think about the latest fashion trends to fill the needs of the new season. And nobody does it better.