In 2024, renown Japanese fashion design Jun Takahashi created a magnificent apparel and accessories collection inspired by David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks for his Undercover clothing company. As officially licensed products from Paramount, this Men’s Fall and Winter 2024 assortment incorporated iconic imagery from the show’s first season. This is the first of several articles looking back at the “Wonderful and Strange” collection by Undercover. For this story, I’m examining the collection’s publicity from Paris Fashion Week on January 20, 2024 through the announcement of the Patch Series on June 14.
WHO IS JUN TAKAHASHI?
Born on September 21, 1969, Jun Takahashi is a Japanese fashion designer who created the Undercover clothing brand in 1993. Born in Kiryū, Gunma, Takahashi attended Gunma Kiryu Nishi High School before enrolling in Fashion Education at Bunka Fashion College in 1988. Two years later while still enrolled in college, he started the brand “Undercover” with a friend. He graduated a year later from academy’s apparel design department.
In 1994, his first collection, the 1994-1995 Autumn/Winter collection, was presented in Tokyo in show format which caught the attention of the fashion world. By 2002, Takahashi participated in Paris Women’s Fashion Week with the 2003 Spring/Summer collection. In the years that followed, he continued designing ultra-relevant apparel for his apparel company, runway shows and more.
According to Yokogaomag.com, Takahashi’s style was influenced by his young punk years, in which the “ideas of anarchy, rebellion, and artistry translate to every endeavour he’s taken part in.”
“[Takahashi] is a designer and creator who has done the most for staying true to himself without subjecting to the strong fashion machinery that often transforms gifted minds into another forgettable commercial name,” wrote Natalia Andrea Pérez Hernández on August 27, 2024. “This compromise to the craft along the more than thirty years of career have gained him an all-age cult following that resonates equally with his fashion creations, his art pieces or his music taste.”
In addition to fashion, he is also a painter and artist who loves music. He creates Spotify playlists under the name of Kosmic Music. Each playlist contains 15 to 20 songs and runs about 120-minutes, which is approximately the time it takes him to drive from his studio to his home in Japan.
JUN TAKAHASHI IS A TWIN PEAKS FAN
Jun Takahashi was graduating college about the time Twin Peaks was wrapping up it’s second season on ABC Television in the United States. For Japanese viewers, 1991-1992 were banner years to be fans of the surreal show. Lynch and Frost’s series aired multiple times in Japan via pay television and the premiere of the 1992 motion picture, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, took place on May 16. This was the same day the film premiered at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival but months before U.S. audiences would see what happened during the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life. Ticket sales in Japan were wildly successful and Twin Peaks mania took the country by storm.
It’s no surprise then Takahashi is a fan of the 1990s television series. I found an article in System Magazine that briefly mentioned his interest in the show and Lynch’s work. The reporters spoke to him around the time of Twin Peaks: The Return airing in Japan.
“Over and over again, I’m thinking of David Lynch, and his unerring ability to isolate the unsettling in the familiar. On one finger, Takahashi wears a ruby-eyed fox-head ring by Gucci, a gift from his wife. On another, he has a ring with the symbol of the Black Lodge, from Twin Peaks. He’s halfway through the latest season of Lynch’s series and when I inadvertently launch into spoilers (though that is virtually impossible with Twin Peaks), he says, quickly, ‘Don’t tell me’. He considers Lynch a genius, ‘next level’. There’s a clear compatibility. ‘I like to make people nervous,’ he agrees. ‘I hope to make people feel that through my show.’ He acknowledges it’s a challenge to scare people with fashion, but he felt We Are Infinite [another fashion collection] had something unsettling about it, ‘when you don’t know what’s going to happen next’. How Lynchian is that!”
UNDERCOVER PREVIEW AT PARIS FASHION WEEK, JAN. 20, 2024
Takahashi’s Undercover gave a first look at the Autumn / Winter 2024 collection at an invitation only event held on Saturday, January 20, 2024, from 9:00 to 11:30 a.m. A digital look book was released shortly after the preview which contained models sporting the new Twin Peaks apparel and accessories. Fashion magazines and websites were abuzz after the preview saying the new collection is “equal parts unsettling and undeniably cool.”
Here are all of the images with Twin Peaks items from that digital look book. According to the Exif data, the images were captured by Katsuhide Morimoto, a Japanese photographer and visual artist. He was born in Tokyo in 1965 and graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1988.
“TWIN PEAKS” PATCH SERIES ANNOUNCED JUNE 14, 2024
Five months after the Paris Fashion Show preview on June 14, Undercover announced additional details about the “Wonderful and Strange” collection. They posted the news to their “News” section on Undercoverism.com and on their Instagram channel, @Undercover_Lab.
The Twin Peaks-themed collection for the 2024 Fall/Winter season would be released at the end of July. This men’s collection was “inspired by the TV drama ‘Twin Peaks,’ which expresses the worldview of the show.”
The news article also announced on Saturday, June 15, the company would be releasing limited edition, unreleased items ahead of the launch of the regular collection,” tied to with the reopening of their men’s floor in the Aoyama store.
It’s unclear which specific “limited edition, unreleased items” would be found on June 15, but I’m guessing it was items seen in these publicity images.
The website continued by explaining the “denim jacket, shirt, sweater, and knit cardigan have jacquard patches depicting scenes from Twin Peaks attached to the elbow and thigh parts of the fabric The denim jacket would be in stock in early July.
The sparkle shoes were also a part of the Fall/Winter collection but they were not branded with anything Twin Peaks.
TWIN PEAKS PATCH SERIES – TWITTER ANNOUNCEMENT ON JUNE 14, 2024
The company also shared this news on social media, starting with their Twitter account, @undercover_lab. The tweet, translated from Japanese by Google, read:
“With the reopening of the UNDERCOVER Aoyama men’s floor, In preparation for the launch of the 2024 Fall/Winter Men’s Collection, which is inspired by the TV drama “Twin Peaks” and expresses its worldview, unreleased items will be released in limited quantities on Saturday, June 15th.”
Three images were included in the post which contained alternate publicity shots from their News article.
TWIN PEAKS PATCH SERIES – INSTAGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT ON JUNE 14, 2024
On Instagram, the company made three carousel posts on June 14, 2024 announcing the “Twin Peaks” Patch Series.
The first post contained the three models from the News article except some of the images were cropped (due to sizing limitations on Instagram).
The second post contained a shot from their Twitter post along with some alternate looks at the Twin Peaks-themed cardigans with patches.
The final Instagram post on June 14 showed additional products such as the denim jacket and denim pants along with several button down shirts.
I can’t help but see Killer BOB in that last image with the long-haired model sporting the denim jacket. Stay tuned for additional articles about the full product launch of the “Wonderful and Strange” collection that took place in July 2024.
