Undercover Aoyama

Undercover's Aoyama shop stands at 5-3-18 Minami Aoyama in Minato ward, the district Jun Takahashi moved into after his first Harajuku store. Takahashi was born in 1969 in Kiryu, in Gunma prefecture. He studied apparel design at the Bunka Academy of Fashion from 1989 to 1991. There he sang in a Sex Pistols cover band and picked up the nickname Jonio for his resemblance to Johnny Rotten. He began Undercover in 1989 while still a student. The label was formally founded in 1993, the year he and Nigo, later of A Bathing Ape, opened the Nowhere store in Harajuku. The Aoyama shop followed as the brand grew. The first Undercover collection showed in Tokyo in 1994. The same year Takahashi began the intermittent A.F.F.A. project with Hiroshi Fujiwara. The Paris debut came in 2002, and in 2003 the Mainichi Shimbun gave him two fashion awards. The clothes take punk and street references with tattered or frayed elements and printed fabrics. The cuts lean feminine. Takahashi has described the work as strange but beautiful. The brand's own site now lists men's and women's lines, a kids' line and the Shepherd Undercover. Collaborations run from George Cox shoes and Vans OTW to Medicom Toy, The North Face and a Cindy Sherman capsule. A History of U archive and a stockists list sit alongside the shop pages for anyone tracing the label's seasons back to 2013.