Everyday Rituals. Undercover AW24

Jun Takahashi presented an immensely beautiful and important collection. The Undercover designer explained he was thinking about everyday life – the preciousness of the commonplace and the value of ritual. “Perfect Days“, a new film from Wim Wenders (highly recommend watching it on a day when nothing seems to make sense!) about a Tokyo toilet cleaner named Hirayama who’s remarkably sanguine about life – finding beauty in his books, the tapes he plays on his commute, and the photos he takes of trees in parks – was a creative stimulus for Takahashi. So moved by the film, he asked Wenders to write and read a poem for his soundtrack about a woman not unlike Hirayama in her approach to life. “Watching a Working Woman” illustrates a picture of a single mother, 40-years-old, with a job in a law firm, and a young son she likes to go to the movies with. After she puts him to bed, she writes letters and reads books. What made it so resonant and affecting was its relatability; this wasn’t a fashion designer concocting some “real“, yet absolutely fantasy woman, with an improbable wardrobe to match, but rather someone actually… real. The show opened with what looked like a white tank top and a pair of jeans; in fact, it was a jumpsuit with ribbed knit spliced into the pants’ side seams that matched the sweater the model carried in her hand. To follow, there were many more reworkings of “everyday” garments – like a cardigan, a gray marl sweatshirt, and more formal tailoring – to which he bonded swatches of excess fabric (wispy chiffon, metallic tinsel, a shaggy mohair), rendering them anything but ordinary or prosaic. Pure poetry. Make sure to take a look at the bags, made in collaboration with Brigitte Tanaka: haute-crafted grocery shoppers and yoga-friendly totes. Obsessed.