For his FW18 Undercover collection , Jun showed that he really reveres the work of director Stanley Kubrick. He had toyed around with looks inspired by the Shining’s Grady sisters in his last women’s show and for his men’s collection at Pitti he showed many pieces based around Kubrick’s 2001: A Space odyssey. The film centers around a near-future where a rogue AI takes over a manned space mission. The feeling of isolation and dystopia is channeled through various prints reflecting scenes from the movie. It also shows up in other unexpected ways like the HAL 9000 LED fanny packs and raincoats screen-printed with “WARNING.HUMAN ERROR. COMPUTER MALFUNCTION”. The rest of the collection offers up familiar re-treads on Undercover’s signatures – mixed fabrics, trim wool coats and military parkas. A real showstopper for me personally were the down jackets , with illumatinated facemarks that resembled the spacesuits from Kubrick’s sci-fi classic. Jun has always embraced the future in many of his collections, but looking to Kubrick for inspiration has also added a feeling of nostalgia to the proceedings.
If I could raise a criticism of the collection, it would be that the collection feels almost too predictable. It covers all the bases you expect from UC with the same type of printing techniques used in the past and in a way that feels very trend friendly. Still a good collection but perhaps next to the transcendent showing by his friend Takahiro , it feels a little more ordinary.
