Going Undercover with designer Jun Takahashi

Taken from the autumn/winter issue of Dazed:

For AW14, Jun Takahashi of cult brand Undercover turned his models into fairytale queens, albeit wicked ones. If they looked angelic in their crowns made out of braided hair and rhinestones, their blood-red contact lenses and red mascara ensured an eerie quality “like vampires. I wanted to show how cold-blooded the girls could be,” he explains. There were hints of punk rebellion: ruffles of yellow and red tartan and toiles de jouy infiltrated by obscure UFOs (“just a touch of black humour,” the designer reveals).

“I wanted to show how cold-blooded the girls could be” – Jun Takahashi

At the core of the collection were three disparate notions: fear, warmth and royalty. “Mixing conflicting emotions is always my way of creating things. I thought of warmth as the opposite of fear,” says Takahashi. His biggest fear? “My world being forced to change due to the power of authority.” The show included electronic apples carried as offerings by the models. What was their meaning? “Mysteriousness,” cryptically concedes the designer. Then again, the world of Undercover is all about enigma.

See Undercover's SS15 collection below, where Takahashi's twisted fairytale was pulled even further into the digital age with futuristic LED screens adorning bodies and bags: