JU-NNA AW24
Nothing Tired About This “Corporate Exhaustion” Inspired Collection
Words & Interview: Katie Ross
Images Courtesy of Black PR
After an impressively cohesive and well structured show, Original Magazine spoke to Japanese designer Jun Nakamura about his AW24 collection for his brand JU-NNA
Fashion shows are no stranger to a late or chaotic start, but the queue for JU-NNA’s AW24 show seemed more chaotic than most, with a lot of shouting and an unnecessary number of queues depending on where you were sitting or if you were standing.
However, this was no reflection on the show itself, which was based on the concept of “corporate exhaustion” and styled by Myles Mansfield, with earrings fashioned from paper clips and pens and models carrying coffee cups, Filofaxes and old copies of the Evening Standard. It was incredibly well conceived and saw models limping, zombie style, down the catwalk in corporate-esque tailoring that included skirts and trousers that evoked a suit jacket tied around the waist. This was inspired by images of Japanese businessmen drunk and passed out on the streets of its cities’ major business districts.
The colour palette was white, black, grey and navy, no exceptions, and the harsh light and slow beat only exaggerated the industrial ennui.
Standout pieces were a white off shoulder blouse with a diagonal button-down back and comically long sleeves (which would have skimmed the floor on a smaller model) that looked as though Namakura had taken a white suit shirt and turned it upside down. White blouses were the champions of the show for me, with another cropped, silk, excessively ruched version catching my eye particularly. That’s not to say that every piece in the collection was not to be coveted. I couldn’t tell Namakura enough how much I loved it when I met him:
KR: Thank you so much for chatting to me. The show was amazing!
JN: Thank you for coming!
KR: No, thank you! So obviously sustainability is really important to the brand, and I was wondering how you keep on top of that.
JN: Every season I always try to source organic and recycled materials. Especially this season, we have started to choose cotton and silk threads to make garments biodegradable.
KR: Okay, amazing. And so the inspiration behind your show was “corporate exhaustion”. What made you decide to do that?
JN: So we were researching some interesting pictures, and I wanted to include some Japanese elements as well. So we found these pictures that captured exhausted, drunk [people] on the street, and they were wearing suits, and everything started to make sense
KR: I loved how you featured the newspaper under the arm and the coffee cups. It was really cool.
So we're all about sort of championing emerging designers. What sort of advice would you give to your younger self starting out, or a designer who is trying to get into the industry?
JN: It's very, very competitive. Sometimes I don't know if I'm doing good or not but I think it's good to keep doing the thing we believe in, which is good. Even if we don't get a good result, we keep pushing.
KR: I get that. In journalism that's also very important! So my last question was: Is there anyone that you particularly would want to collaborate with in the future?
JN: I would want to collaborate with anyone interested in sustainability, and maybe someone who's interested in handicraft.
KR: Amazing, thank you so much!
