UNDERCOVER
UNDERCOVER
2021-10-22
UNDERCOVER, JUN TAKAHASHI’S STREET FASHION BRAND
Undercover is a Japanese brand created in 1994 by Jun Takahashi. Takahashi’s strengths are its ability to interpret street fashion and the suggestions that inspire it. These range among flower bouquets, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, taxidermy and Japanese manga art.
Spring/Summer 2017
Undercover is a very appreciated brand by international designers such as Miuccia Prada, Rei Kawakubo and by the writer Suzy Menkes, who recently defined Takahashi as “the essence of Japanese cool”. In 2005, Canon asked Takahashi to create a line of limited edition camera cases.
A NEW DECADE
Undercover began the new decade with a collaboration with Nike, interpreting Nike garments for a winter capsule collection. The Nikelab x Undercover collaboration returned for a second capsule collection in 2015, complete with clothing and shoes.
Undercover x Nike
In 2013 Jun Takahashi received the first prize of the Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix, now at its 31st edition. The designer, who won the Japanese award sponsored by the Mainichi newspaper for the second time after 2001, is the fourth to receive the double awards after Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto.
In 2016 Takahashi published a book about his creative approach and the history of Undercover published by Rizzoli New York. Titled “Undercover” it contains a preface by Suzy Menkes and over 300 photographs.
RECENT YEARS
In 2018 Jun Takahashi decided to stop the women’s clothing fashion shows, focusing exclusively on menswear. After the last show in Paris, in fact, only the men’s collections will be exhibited during the fashion week, while women’s wear will be presented exclusively in the showroom. The menswear collections represent a turning point for Undercover, with the exception of two special fashion shows set up during Pitti Uomo, the first in 2009 and in January 2018.
The following year, the Italian fashion house Valentino collaborated with the Japanese brand on the fall-winter 2019/20 collection. It’s a theatrical collection, traveling between past and future. Pierpaolo Piccioli defined him as “always unpredictable in the short circuits of things, with a cultured way of doing streetwear, which is full of references”.
Undercover, Fall-Winter 2019-2020.
After 19 years of shows in Paris Undercover returned to Japan for the men’s and women’s fashion shows of the fall / winter 2021 collection, due to the pandemic restrictions. Parallel to the show, in fact, the brand immediately put on sale a selection of limited items from it. Moreover the Undercoverism men’s line was created for the fall / winter 2021 collection, a label designed “for men of the next generation who empathize with the” ism “of the Undercover brand”.
Fall/winter 2021