I saw a mouse inside out once. I wasn’t surprised. I’d just thrown a dictionary on it. It wasn’t so much inside out, as it’s insides were out. Turns out the pen is mightier than the sword. Leather bound words are at any rate.

Junya Watanabe takes a similar approach in his menswear designs. The metaphorical mouse in this case being clothes and the metaphorical dictionary being, you know, his mind or some shit.

Watanabe is not averse to having insides outside, which I guess puts the outside inside. Or maybe there are two outsides? Or two insides, so technically you can’t wear it. Maybe he’s achieved the totally useless jacket. One only for gawping at and pretending to understand.

The kit I’m spotlighting today, is from a collection that sees Watanabe getting busy in collaboration with German outdoors equipment manufacturer Seil Marschall. If you check out their online store, you’ll see they’re proper heritage merchants and pretty far from the aesthetic criteria demanded of art.

They’re all about thorn-proof jackets, water-proof backpacks and werewolf resistant shorts. No matter how famished the Central European lycanthrope, he’ll never get his chompers through the waxed canvas. I think it actually says that on the label.

Seil Marschall is kit to run through mud in, to build shelters in and mince up wild animals to make sausages in. Luckily for me, Watanabe is more about making clothes specifically for standing in bars looking smug.

See that jacket above? That’s the ‘right’ way round – depending on your preference I guess. Now look below…

What the whah? Look at the state of that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, personally, I think this coat is properly strong. I would quite literally, wear this shit. But, I’m guessing a few might be thinking it’s a bit on the bonk-bonk side. Particularly, when you see the back…

It’s a bit like… you can see the fucking labels. And got to be honest, I’m not so down with that. You’ll totally have the inevitable, ‘why are you wearing your jacket inside out?’ clotishness to deal with. But also, your whole ‘I’m not, it’s reversible’  defense, is scuppered, by the fact the labels are blatantly on show. Watanabe doesn’t make it easy for a brah. Anyways, here’s some more of the range…

You can snare a bunch of this collection over at Haven, or End, or Goodhood. Prepare yourself, the prices are positively nauseating.

I bought a blazer by Comme des Garçons SHIRT once. It was reversible. The regular side was basic grey boiled wool. The other side, the interesting side, was grey wool too, but with large grey cotton panels, irregularly stitched on.

I thought it looked the bomb and I wore it out to a bar in Bath. All my simpleton friends laughed at me and said I looked like a coal miner. I smiled to myself. They just didn’t understand. You see, the inside was on the outside. And that made it clever.