Jun Takahashi – a man famed for his strange and subversive designs at UNDERCOVER, where he’s spent the best part of three decades bridging Parisian runways with Tokyo’s underground – has been outed as a fan of Netflix’s Stranger Things. So much so, in fact, that he’s now dedicating an entire capsule collection to the character of Eddie Munson: a shaggy-haired teenager styled in the image of Lars Ulrich, who leads a Dungeons & Dragons society at high school. Cool guy!
In fashioning an imagined uniform for the dungeon masters of Hawkins High, Takahashi has produced tattered denim jackets, grubby hoodies, distressed sweatshirts, biker jackets, and oversized t-shirts – all of which come emblazoned with the club’s skull-and-crossbones insignia as if they were members of an outlawed motorcycle gang. As unexpected as the Netflix collaboration might seem, UNDERCOVER has long mined pop culture’s most tortured souls. For its AW21 show, Takahashi got Thom Yorke to perform a haunting remix of “Creep”; its SS21 show had Cindy Sherman’s face imprinted over utilitarian jackets; and its AW19 collection featured stills from Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria.
From A Clockwork Orange, to 2001: A Space Odyssey, to The Shining, Takahashi’s back catalogue at UNDERCOVER read like an anthology of cult classics – creating pieces that unite the arthouse and the hypebeast. Is Stranger Things considered arthouse? Not really! But it is set in the 80s and does feature Winona Ryder. It’s also precisely the kind of thing that’s been filmed to look as though it’s a VHS classic. If you’re into Eleven and her ragtag crew of misfit pals, the Hellfire Club collection can be purchased online and in UNDERCOVER’s Tokyo flagship.
Otherwise, I will leave you with this video of Millie Bobby Brown’s “brilliant Amy Winehouse impersonation”.
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