![]() ![]() Now you can just type on your phone and find a shop, but it was very alien back then it was like you were in the future. I was still working for Michael when I left college, he had given me some addresses, but I was walking through Harajuku on my own and I didn’t really know where to go. ![]() I don’t think I was prepared the first time I’d been looking at Boon magazine and had all this shopping in mind. But the second time I came out, I completely fell in love. Shell-shocked that I don’t think I liked it very much because I didn’t know how to deal with it. It’s really changed now it is really easy to get around and do things. I remember walking around and it was quite difficult because there weren’t that many foreign people here and your phone didn’t work and there were no English signs. I had £200 with me, my sister had got me a flight and hotel room for a graduation present. Kim: I came in 2001 and I had just graduated. I’ve got a grey Small Parts jacket and whenever I wear it, people always ask me where I got it from, because it’s just so relevant. In luxury, you can obviously do those things in quite an extravagant way, but the starting point was your stuff. Something I would always think about, like the detailing on a zip pull. There was Helmut Lang and Margiela, which I loved, but this was just a completely different way of thinking, the attention to detail, the branding on everything was just so strong. It was more interesting to look at – nothing normal or typical. When you saw all these amazing things that you were doing, or Hiroshi or Nigo. I remember when the boxes would come in with the orders and everyone was super excited and would just sort of rip into them finding their things. I was talking with Fraser Cooke about it and we were saying that the old Undercover stuff is just as modern now as when you first did it – and that’s a really great thing. It was fashion, and if you released all that stuff now, it would still be really relevant, that’s the thing. ![]() ![]() You couldn’t really get any Undercover stuff from anywhere apart from directly from Japan, so people would be like, ‘What are you wearing, where’s that from?’ And people just couldn’t work it out, because it was that mix, I hate the term streetwear, but it was an element. Small Parts was one of my favourite ones. We would look at things and enjoy the detailing. Michael was always really kind and would let us order stuff he was really generous. I’ve got all my Undercover stuff in storage because it goes way back. I never wore them because I love them so much I’ve had them in the box ever since. Kim: They are bright electric blue with the checkboard plastic over the front. Which photographer Norbert Schoerner then shot in an apocalyptic Tokyo, as part of a larger portfolio documenting Jun Takahashi’s world – taking in everything from late-night karaoke to early-morning jogging. Meanwhile, in Paris, Tim Blanks spoke to Jun and deciphered his most recent collections the day after the final Undercover womenswear show (for the time being), entitled We Are Infinite. He then invited a visiting Kim Jones over to Undercover HQ for a chat about how Japanese streetwear has always inspired So, to Tokyo, whereJun Takahashi caught up with his mentor, ‘brother’ and fellow designer Nobuhiko ‘Nobu’ Kitamura, whose label Hysteric Glamour triggered his love of fashion. Add in his long-standing love of collaboration and the Undercover ethos seems to encapsulate the current fashion moment.Īnd the perfect time for System to go Undercover. Indeed, since launching Undercover in 1990 in Tokyo and opening the now-legendary store Nowhere in 1993 (with Nigo and Hiroshi Fujiwara), Takahashi has actually been altering the grammar of fashion: marrying what we now call streetwear with high-fashion detailing and quality finishes, all contained in avant-garde, high-wire concepts that are both deadly serious and airily light-hearted. They have meaning, symbolizing his fearless desire to upend preconceived ideas and almost force you see the world in a new way. Travel into his Undercover world and his clothes appear, season after season, like answers to questions you’d never thought of asking. Jun Takahashi is unafraid to dive into the unknown. ![]()
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