Undercover Men’s Spring 2024
Jun Takahashi made a rare trip to Paris for the menswear shows, presenting a romantic collection in his showroom, which was filled with original art, floral prints and flocking.
The designer collaborated with the Berlin-based artist Helen Verhoeven, taking her smudgy, colorful depictions of male and female bodies and layering them onto technical outerwear, shorts, T-shirts and even baseball caps.
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Tailoring, by contrast, was plain and deconstructed, embellished only with clusters of garment tags sewn on the outside. The designer worked with whisper-light toile fabric, sealing the seams of topcoats and jackets with narrow strips of transparent tape.
The do-it-yourself spirit extended to an olive twill jacket with a kooky mix of red and green buttons, and a lineup of boxy jackets with textured, flowery fabrics inspired by carpetbags, tapestries and flocked wallpaper.
It stretched to a black biker jacket that was pieced together from bits of leather and jersey, and to hoodies that were made from a patchwork of chopped-up T-shirts.
Takahashi, who was decked in his signature owlish glasses and broad-brimmed hat, said he wanted to conjure an atmosphere of “darkness, and quiet, beautiful and sweet.”
Some of the fabrics, in particular the tapestry and flocked ones, were drawn from his womenswear collections. The designer said men’s and women’s fashion was getting ever closer, although his approach to design remains the same. “Fashion should offer hope in the darkness, and make us dream.”
Launch Gallery: Undercover Men's Spring 2024
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