less but better / undercover mens ss10

The Undercover ss10 collection is one that is easy to like. Taking inspiration from German industrial designer Dieter Rams, Jun Takahashi channels the functionalist spirit of Rams' design philosophy, sending down the runway a collection of highly wearable but not run-of-the-mill pieces. Easy pieces with clean structured lines executed in a palette of neutral shades, a spectrum of clinical white slowly diffusing into a dark midnight black. Many of the details on the garments take direct references to products designed by Rams; contrasting panels on jackets and burnt orange accents and laether straps are found on some garments while others feature perforation and label-like insets. Tech fabrics, as in many of his past collections, take centre stage. There is also a conscious play of volume, juxtaposing the hard, structured, pared down, sometimes body-obscuring lines of the jackets and outerwear, with tight body-conforming, speckled metallic leggings or billowy pieces done in soft flowy fabric. There were also quite a few printed camo looks in the collection which I felt look rather unfortunate. I have left thoseepictures out, though, I would give it a second look when they hit the racks; I might just change mind mind like I did for the ss09 outwear.




Named "Less but Better", which is the motto that Rams worked by, striving to making objects better, straightforward, easy to use and stripped of all superfluous elements. The pared down aesthetics and the clean lines of the collection bears a strong visual congruence with Rams' product designs. The collection is seemingly an attempt at melding industrial design with fashion design, manifesting Rams' aestheticized functionalism (as opposed to pure functionality) in the realm of fashion (as opposed to functional tech garments); but at the same time, it also begs the comparison between the two rather different disciplines. Industrial design, in Rams' case, puts more weight in the function and workings of the product, after which the aesthetics is applied to composing the functional parts. A beautiful product that does not work well is a poor design, form follows function if you will. On the other hand, in fashion design (specifically referring to the realm of seasonal high fashion in which Undercover exists), the function-aesthetics balance, more often than not, tips to the side of the latter. The intensity and potency of the functionalism found in industrial design is perhaps harder to achieve in fashion. An example would be the use of perforation in the collection, the perforated shirt and the triangular perforations of some of the outwear are less functionally informed than, say, the perforated circle on the shell of a Rams radio serving as the speaker. The perforations on the garments are more motif-like than anything else.

Disregarding the conceptual inconsistency (I was just being unnecessarily demenading), I do enjoy the collection and I think it will do well on the racks. It is a good mix of unfussy pieces that can easily be dressed up or down and will appeal to the young upmarket clientele and alos Undercover's strong streetwear fanbase.

The Undercover spring/summer 2010 was presented at the Pitti Uomo 76.