Junta Watanabe: Ships To Albania

I really think I’ve been thinking about Junta Watanabe the wrong way.

For years since registering the domain name, I’ve imagined what a Junta Watanabe fashion line would look like. How to make it. How much or how little it should evoke CdG. How many or how few items to produce to make it work. How good or idiotic a few t-shirts would be. Should these pieces of clothing be mass or artisanal? Did Sterling Ruby validate clothes as art objects or ruin them?

a telephoto image of eight brown migrants in black and purple tracksuits surrounded by italian cops and handlers on the dock of an albanian port in 2024, where they were shipped to await refusal of asylum in the eu. one cop leading the way looks like a dad at a soccer game, only with a badge around his neck. the one next to him is husky in jeans and a hi-viz hellow DATCH t-shirt that matches his sneakers
eight Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants getting taken by Italy to a detention center in Albania in Nov. 2024, via aia.al

Who should the clothing be for? The guerrillas or the junta? The idealistic junta or the power-mad monster junta? What if it’s conceived as critique, but ends up looking like prepper chic? Reactionary insurrectionistware? Half the looks I’d considered ironically a few years ago now appear on the ICE, who look like doughy Watchmen cosplayers.

Anyway, I think it’s all wrong, and I have to go back to the roots, to the MO for one of my first domain-inspired projects, mafiaboy.com. For that I was blogging without blog software, collecting links and lifestyle-related quotes from the investigation and trial of the Montreal teenager whose DDOS attack took down Yahoo! It was meant as a critique of the way hacker or script kiddie culture was conveyed in the media via pop cultural and fashion references. And because Mafiaboy was a minor, who couldn’t be named or depicted, these references took on outsized importance for courtroom reporters. And hilariously, I closed the loop when I got a check for like $48 from Rocawear for affiliate links to Mafiaboy’s satin bomber jacket.

a white woman with straight dark hair models a black and purple tracksuit jacket and black track pants, posing with one hand in her pocket and the other on her hip, contraposto, because it's italy i guess. givova is the brand
The Givova Tuta Visa Triacetato 4S Unisex in Nero/Viola, EUR14,90 at Givova

Point is, Junta Watanabe is already out there, on the runways of life. In this catalyzing case, that’s the bold purple and black tracksuits Italy dressed eight migrants in in 2024, before shipping them off to a detention camp-for-hire in Albania. The report yesterday of other EU countries adopting third-country removal and detention brought Italy’s pioneering looks back into view: it’s Italy’s own Givova Visa Triacetato 4S in Nero/Viola, a bold look for one-way border crossings. And while they don’t ship to the USA, they will ship to Albania.

So watch this space, I guess.

EU greenlights controversial return hubs in ‘strictest ever’ new migration law [euronews, h/t @alexanderchee]