At Salle Wagram in Paris, Japanese designer Jun Takahashi gave his all-time favorite collection — fall 2004 — “but beautiful…part parasitic, part stuffed,” a new spin for fall 2025.
The original collection saw Takahashi imagining what singer Patti Smith would look like wearing clothes resembling stuffed animals made by French plush artist Anne-Valerie Dupond, whose raw, uncalculated vision dovetailed with the designer’s obsession with the beauty in imperfection.
The fall 2025 lineup, which also marked the designer’s 35th anniversary in the fashion business, took the premise to include a wider range of women who are as equally intriguing as Smith, who recently declared herself a fan of Chinese fantasy period drama.
The street casting painted a vivid picture of the “unpolished, ugly but beautiful” Undercover female archetypes who are not afraid to look different and age gracefully with style and quirk.
Highlights included asymmetric tailoring, dramatic-shaped puffers, spiral cut Champion track sets, jacquard ensembles dripping with pins, beads, buttons and gold ornaments, padded coats with uneven finishing, rolled-up ripped jeans and monstrous heels supplied by Dupond.
Ending the show on a high note, Takahashi sent a twinset of decadently embellished black and white winged looks down the runway with Nina Simone’s nonchalant number “Lilac Wine”playing in the background.
Backstage, Takahashi said he plans to have multiple drops through the year and maybe host a party next season in Paris to cap off the anniversary celebration.
