Angels and punk in Undercover's FW25 collection

Champions tracksuits with floral-printed stiletto shoes, Patagonia-like down jackets and fleece alternated with punk jackets decorated with pins and blue skirts with metallic fringe like pom-poms. Dresses adorned with butterflies and encrusted with mother-of-pearl buttons with small angel wings sculpted on the back paraded alongside military bombers and patched jackets covered in all sorts of trinkets, blazers and skirts with butterfly prints, shawls wrapped around the waist like belts. This brief list is enough to understand that Undercover's FW25 collection, presented yesterday to the notes of Nina Simone at the Salle Wagram in Paris, was a mixture—often contradictory, certainly fragmented and irregular—of styles and inspirations. And there was a reason: yesterday’s show was difficult to understand and process because it was Jun Takahashi's tribute to his favorite collection, the FW04, titled “but beautiful…part parasitic, part stuffed,” which combined, on one hand, inspirations drawn directly from the new wave wardrobe of Patti Smith and, on the other, the stylistic suggestions of a textile sculptor named Anne-Valerie Dupond, who creates fabric figurines expertly patched together like Frankenstein’s monster, oscillating between ironic and seriously unsettling. Those who want a taste of Dupond’s style can observe the curious “sculpted” shoes that appeared on the feet of the last looks—the evening ones—which were also the most beautiful and spectacular. But in general, one can understand why the show seemed hard to grasp, as it combined a certain (healthy) degree of self-referentiality with already obscure references, along with the usual understandable commercial touch, resulting in a final outcome that was very coherent with itself and the brand but also not very intuitive—some might say convoluted. But perhaps that was the idea.

Takahashi is one of those designers who loves the chaotic look and does not seem overly interested in adhering to certain trends—in his collection, pajamas, sportswear worthy of the most picturesque rapper, and tailored gray wool suits can coexist. And even if some of these elements might leave a drunk audience or influences from Demna, Margiela, Prada, or Phoebe Philo perplexed (undoubtedly, a full look featuring a hoodie and sweatpants with a visible logo is somewhat passé), it remains true that the zeitgeist Takahashi has reinterpreted for this show possesses its own charm. It is impossible not to see, in the more "daytime" side of the collection, an interesting and sharp take on boho-chic, which is slowly making a comeback in mainstream culture. However, the way these inspirations are articulated—with a strong wabi-sabi component, with such an anarchic inspiration and a tension between the opposing poles of rawly modern sportswear and baroque ornamentation—has its own modernity. In a world of designers heavily focused on clean and fluid looks, Undercover shows us that imperfection and chaos have their own value and that, ultimately, punk is not dead. And all of this without conceptual flights of fancy that elsewhere would be abstruse: the everyday uniform that Takahashi envisions is certainly whimsical and, in some ways, bizarre (after all, the literal motto of the brand is “We make noise not clothes”), but it is also, first and foremost, practical. Of course, it does not shy away from more "artistic" looks, like the evening dresses in the finale, with tutus made of sculpted down jackets. But the very fact that they were down jackets and that the dresses' embellishments were buttons only serves to immerse us once again in a dimension of reassembled everyday life.

Undercover is one of those brands that represents a universe of its own. Despite expanding into highly commercial areas of fashion—through numerous collaborations with mass-market brands or more immediately branded garments—the brand remains a delightfully intellectual entity. The best clothes it produces always have something fundamentally strange about them, and that is their beauty. This entire universe, certainly not free from the contradictions we have seen, is shaped by the tastes and obsessions of its creator, Jun Takahashi. Beyond turning his brand into a commercial empire as well as a parallel reality, Takahashi is also an extremely refined painter, a music expert and musician himself, and the owner of highly specific tastes. These specific tastes were on display at the show: «Now, twenty years after its creation, I have decided to reinvent my best personal collection by focusing on the zeitgeist and a casual adult style. I was 35 then, and now I am 55, and I am excited to see how these twenty years are reflected in the design,» Takahashi wrote in his show notes. Which other designers on the scene could claim to be excited about presenting a collection that is both a tribute and a self-tribute? Which other longtime creative directors can or even want to still play with this aesthetic on an artistic level, without falling into sterility and repetition? The answer is: far too few.