JW Anderson does primitive play with Juergen Teller

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jan 20, 2021

Once, major fashion weeks were all about showing clothes for a precise season. Now in the pandemic, brands treat fashion weeks as semi-seasonless affairs. Case in point, JW Anderson, whose contribution to the current Paris Fashion Week menswear fall-winter 2021-2022 was actually, er, a pre-collection for men, and women.

 
Meaning what is normally shown to important buyers a couple of months before any of the collection hits an actual catwalk. But instead today – Wednesday, Jan. 20, the second day of the six-day French season - is jumbled into the Paris runway season.
 
That said, despite the odd timing, this was another absorbing collection from Jonathan Anderson, helping him to maintain his lead as London’s hippest creator.
 
“Going back to what JW Anderson was at the very beginning… primitive play with materials. And looking at new ideas in gender and fabrication,” explained designer Jonathan Anderson, perched on a bench before a massive board of looks.
 
Jonathan’s big idea this week was working with Juergen Teller, the German photographer and Bayern Munich fan. The board featured his photos; and a series of posters, which video footage showed plastered on fountains; electrical boxes and sea gods throughout historic London. Starring the UK actress Sophie Okonedo.

With all live fashion events banned by the Préfecture de la Police in Paris this month, the entire six-day menswear season this week, and the four-day haute couture season next week, is all taking place online.
 
Where many brands opted to show edgy videos and recorded phygital shows, Anderson simply showed this pre-coll’ on the racks. Even picking up garments like in a preview for an editor.

 
Scouring the collection, the ghost of Klaus Nomi wafted about seen in the clown-like chequered pants, albeit worn with Memphis Belle shearling flight jackets. Also impressing were the dress-length mohair sweaters for guys, intersected with silver nylon belts. Peaches and squashes were printed on tabard sweaters, and Anderson reprised the Harry Styles patchwork hyper-color cardigan in a series of logo sweaters that hipsters will devour.
 
Few people do volume as sweetly as Jonathan, whose cantilevered trousers in Clongowes Wood College purple leather or shaggy white shearling looked great. As did his oversized Brahmin dandy cotton shirts; sexy Little Women puckered cotton dresses and the marvellous coats - either in hand-painted silver or shearlings with humungous shawl collars.

And to provide a little balm on the house’s bottom-line, a bunch of landscape felt totes again with the JWA logo, for which Instagram fashionistas will surely bray.