Only Junya Could Make Stüssy, Levi’s, and Spiewak Pop Off Like This
There’s an old adage: “It takes a village to raise a child.” The same sentiment applies to Junya Watanabe.
The Japanese designer’s menswear label is always down bad for collaborations, regularly linking with a village's worth of brands from all corners of the industry each season. Major heritage companies like Levi’s and New Balance appear, but so do more IYKYK names like heritage German shoemaker Heinrich Dinkelacker and Wyoming-founded outerwear label Rocky Mountain Featherbed.
Don’t call it an exercise in corporate synergizing, though. Watanabeville may be bustling, but it’s also deeply strange. That’s because each season, overstuffed with a who’s who of supporting labels, becomes an exercise in transformation: the guardrails governing each company’s self-image are tossed aside as Watanabe becomes less a curator than a key — unlocking each brand’s ability to experiment.
Take the Junya Watanabe Man Fall/Winter 2026 collection, for example. There’s sharply tailored wool formalwear by Levi’s (made in Japan, no less) and weird New Balance runners with a dress-shoe twist. A surprise Stüssy reunion featured unexpectedly preppy collared shirts, khakis, and blazers, plus an incredibly steezy triple-collab ripstop jacket that also roped in Spiewak, the American military contractor-turned-fashion label.
With the FW26 wares now filtering into stores, it's even easier to see how adept Watanabe is — not just at amassing a stacked cast of supporting characters, but at warping them to meet his vision.
Getting so many disparate brands to let loose a little is great, but what sets a Watanabe menswear collab apart is this: no matter which direction the collab zigs or zags, the end product remains supremely wearable. That’s no easy feat.
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