Undercover

The first comprehensive book on the work of Jun Takahashi of UNDERCOVER, an icon of Harajuku streetwear and the presumptive heir to the heavy mantle of Japanese deconstruction. Takahashi Jun’s fashion is not born out of an excessively intellectualized agenda. While not quite populist, his generative influences are instead romantic—even gothic. A fixture of the Paris collections for more than ten years—plus seventeen uninterrupted seasons in Tokyo prior to that—Takahashi’s life’s work confirms a maturation from self-conscious artifice and rebel pastiche to a steely, withering elegance all his own. Hailing from Gunma Prefecture like his friend NIGO® of *A Bathing Ape®, Takahashi’s long association with the undisputed king of Ura-Harajuku in the early 1990s is now the stuff of local fashion lore.