Jun Takahashi sends out faded, menswear-minded clothes for Undercover’s SS27 collection that stay well-behaved from the front. From behind they sprout wings, drapes, tulle and cut-outs, and the show ends in a strange, padded finale.
Jun Takahashi’s collection for Undercover only makes sense once the models turn around. Look 26 is a brown double-breasted coat, blotched and sun-bleached in line with the collection’s focus on details revealed through colourful fading and distressing.A cluster of badges and a fabric rose sits on the lapel, and polka dots peek from the cuffs. It’s a proper trench from the front. From behind, a photographic pair of white wings is printed across the shoulder blades. The polka dots become a recurring thread through the show, turning up in the lining of the green blazer, on cargo trousers, underneath a cardigan and on the spotted scarf of a black dress.
The business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back idea started earlier, with red wings brushed across the back of a pale yellow jacket in look 1. It works because the fronts give nothing away.
As mentioned, the press notes talk about colour fading and distressing, and you can see it in nearly every cloth. There’s crumpled khaki, a red satin baseball jacket with its “Groupie” script rubbed down to a ghost, patched denim with oval knee patches and a grey skirt with a washed-out eyelet hem. The most literal example is the tonal yellow jacket over a yellow shirt, with patched, frayed trousers.
Takahashi’s best trick is draping, which he uses to make a jacket look like it’s slipping off its wearer. The field jacket has a grey satin cowl pinned across the shoulders, and behind it becomes a trailing panel over a mustard velvet back. A trench wears a cream satin scarf in front, with a lining panel and strap exposed at the back, as if the coat were halfway undressed. A blush satin suit, soft and lace-trimmed from the front, drops its whole back into a deep drape that exposes a pale blue shirt.
Jun lets the cloth hang off the body rather than cutting it away, and these are the most convincing pieces, because the back actually changes how the garment hangs. With its lace-trimmed cuffs and hems and a quilted polka-dot handbag, the suit is also one of the more feminine looks.
Some backs only repeat. The houndstooth coat reveals a lace-panelled white T-shirt with feathers, and the green cardigan carries a spill of cream ruffles and tulle. Both are lovely, but by now you can predict the reveal.
The quietest looks do the most. A pink bomber has the outline of a skull and bow stitched into its back so faintly that you only find it by walking behind.
The late dresses are stripped back too. A turquoise slip dress mixes lace, satin and eyelet panels, and a crumpled beige sundress is nothing but surface.
A brown linen shift gets puffed sleeves of dark tulle ruffles, a hot pink satin dress with a pleated waist and white-edged hems looks like a nightie worn on the outside, and a black drop-waist dress with a lace hem and a spotted scarf is the most sober thing in the last stretch of the Undercover collection.
The final looks are something else entirely. Takahashi designs a strapless red velvet gown that carries a cage of padded, intestine-like forms on one shoulder and a heavy bundle of them at the hip, all in pale grey and wrapped in tulle. Its green twin is rotted into holes at the hem, with the same forms in pink and a feathered headband. It’s grotesque and tender at once, and it makes everything before it feel like the polite version of an idea that wants to bite. You walk away wanting to see everything from behind, and then wondering what the dresses were hiding.
So what is Jun Takahashi trying to say? Maybe it’s that nobody is only what they show you. The fronts are polite, faded, lived-in, the kind of clothes you’d barely notice, and everything interesting happens behind them, where you only find it if you’re willing to look. Starting from a collection he has described as casual-wear with a subtle sense of displacement, he turns that displacement into something you have to walk around to discover. The final gowns push the idea to its limit. The sweetness is on the outside and something raw and organic sits right against the body.
You could read it as a comment on how much we hide, or on how much more interesting the hidden part tends to be. Either way, he makes you turn around.