The UNDERCOVER menswear collection for Spring Summer 2010 has been heavily influenced by the work of German industrial designer Dieter Rams, as revealed to us by the wonderful Také. Hirakawa (Japanese fashion journalist and friend of Jun Takahashi). Dr. Dieter Rams worked for the electronics company Braun for four decades, and was director of design there for over 30 years. Rams’ honed an aesthetic of simple, utilitarian elegance and developed an ease of use and functionality in all his hundreds of products. He is often considered one of the great masters of modernist industrial design. His ethos for design is:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to purity, back to simplicity.

It is not difficult to understand Jun Takahashi’s interest in Dr. Rams, when his own principles for design do not fall far from those of Rams, albeit with a slightly more embellished and creative twist. The physical translation of this fascination is evident in the details of Jun’s clothing, and the conceptual link is evident in the execution of his designs overall. Jackets were adorned with patches that resembled radio gauges, tops were perforated like speaker cases, eyewear was transported direct from laboratory to catwalk, and even the colour palette resembled the strict neutrals and metallics of Rams’ designs, only small details adding pops of bright colour.

The influence of Dieter Rams on UNDERCOVER has imbued the clothes with a distinctly industrial and technological aesthetic, that is enhanced by Jun Takahashi’s extensive research and use of technical fabrics. There is a certain naivety to the garments also, the appliqué gauges and discrete patched labelling almost suggesting vintage pilot or scientist uniforms – though with a definitively sportswear edge.

This collision of 21st century Japanese fashion design with 20th century German industrial design could allow for all sorts of recession rhetoric, but this pairing seems rather to sit as a comfortable entry point for Takahashi to introduce his mens collection to the conceptual level of his womenswear. All politics aside, it stands as a beautiful alignment of aesthetics.