Undercover. Men's Fall 2020 - Paris Fashion Week

Images from the designer and the public domain. Credited to the photographer/company where applicable: Gorunway.com)

As discussed in my Spring 2020 Ready-To-Wear review of Jun Takahashi's brand Undercover, there is a lost-in-translation charm of Japanese fashion designers, particularly when they show their collections beyond Tokyo Fashion Week.  I study Japanese Zen or at lest, in a respectful way, looking at the more iconoclastic and offbeat of the Zen lore and its practitioners, knowing that it was introduced to Japan in the 5th Century by Chinese Ch'an (Zen) masters – one thing that stands out, not just from any religious or philosophical aspect of Japanese culture, is their inherent ability to combine and restructure outside influences, they do that with an endearing mastery.  For the most part, for us in the West, we struggle to grasp this very unique aspect of isolationist Japanese culture, any more than its pop culture reference.  Beyond the novelty lies a sincerity, which, for the Japanese themselves in so many ways is portrayed as a theatrical importance.  

Takahashi for his Fall 2020 men's at Paris Fashion Week the collection took on the intensity of a visual narrative via a theatrical performance, which included female dancers and a male protagonist playing the ruthless warlord, sourced from the incredibly intense Japanese feudal 1957 epic “Throne of Blood” (Akira Kurosawa), which was influenced by Shakespeare's Macbeth. Takahashi's *drama unfolded in three parts, with the Japanese influenced femme fatales maintaining a constant seduction over the wayward and ill fated male dancer. 

The Undercover collection, as noted with some of the London and Milan showings so far early in this new year are loosening up the modernist, tailored and suiting arrays that have stumbled over from 2019 into 2020, interfused with the thrift mix and match looks. The mountaineering, urban combat/street wear and rugged styles are making a comeback, which in its time-line reached a peak of the mentioned trend in 2018.  Yet, this time its reemergence has maintained the recycled and thrift 'shop' attached styles. Which in turn is becoming a solid look for 2020. But, Takahashi has issued a striking decree, with the foreground theatrics and cryptic narrative, which could be the concept of clothing as a form of protective layering to survive within or least a psychological reassurance.  A styled armour.  More so it may just stand as a defining fixture of both men's and women attire, as the collection is also aimed at females. The Japanese master of fashion Yohji Yamamoto has long portrayed that idea that women are capable of wearing men's clothing, as an acceptable fluidity – which was the reasoning for his first brand Y's.  

Superbly layered and fitted jackets and coats, padded, tough and resilient. A seriousness amongst the serene, with draped linen and beautifully formulated styles of Scottish Macbeth tartan with images of the arrowed villain, who actually had real arrows fired at him for the climatic ending, from Kurosawa's film drama "Throne of Blood".  The women's styles mixed with the men's collection are stunning, Japanese/Western infused floral prints, layered onto a futuristic style.  The color palette is vivid, yet also muted at the same time. An outstanding collection for Takahashi.
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*If history is a lesson, it should be pondered quickly as the present waits for no one and from all of the lessons that may be leaned from 2019 were the delusional aspects, particularly in pop culture, of looking for self centered metaphors in everything – as a politicization. Life is a theater and sometimes you may have to let it run its course in all of its drama.  Such was Takahashi runway/theater show for his Fall 2020 collection.  As it is the obscure that challenges the mind, but it is the hardest to discern.   For a reason.