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In my mind, each of Jun Takahashi’s Undercover collections is like a snow globe world in which the clothes and themes change, but a sense of wonder, and loss, are constants. This season, to mark his 35 years in fashion, the designer reprised his fall 2004 collection. Not only did he iterate on past designs, but the cast included models who walked in the But Beautiful show 21 years ago, and Takahashi once again collaborated with the French artist Anne-Valérie Dupond who had made masks, animal claws, accessories, and a patchwork used for the set. For fall 2025, Dupond hand crafted seven pairs of shoes, and a memento mori in the form of a skull-shaped bag.
Reviewing the show, Nicole Phelps wrote that it “produced deep thoughts in the audience, about the bittersweet effects of the passage of time.” One of the ways it did so was by referencing things with ephemeral beauty; there were prints of flowers and butterflies, a candle flame, and drifting feathers. The delicacy of these references was countered by military-style jackets, some with medals, others with pins that read “Don’t Touch Me” and “Loser,” and Frankensteined patchworks. The limits of people-built systems are everywhere around us; Takahashi seemed to be countering that by introducing stuffed animals (a symbol perhaps of childhood innocence) and references to the animal world. Independently from each other Takahashi and Dupond—who had creative freedom—made a bestiary that included majestic fowl, humble song birds, stuffed bears and rabbits, deer, owls, crows, and spiders. “Our dreams (or nightmares) must be connected,” said the artist in an online exchange. She reads the birds as “speaking of beauty and freedom, in contrast to the gravity of the actual world.”
Dupond’s practice grew out of an attempt to make a stuffed animal as a toy. A review of her past exhibitions and collaborations reveal that bestiaries and mythologies are central to her work, which aesthetically merges baroque flourishes with homespun craftsmanship. “My work draws on childhood—on its wounds, on a desire for repair,” said Dupond, who leaves her stitches exposed. The physicality of her stitching is one of the ways she consciously plays with the idea of “ladies’ work” as something inferior. Together, Takahashi and Dupond helped us imagine a world where the needle was mightier than the sword.
Below, Dupond talks about her practice and collaborations with Undercover, and shares detailed images of the magic slippers she made for But Beautiful.
