The Undercover Fall/Winter 2006 runway, designed by Jun Takahashi, is often regarded as one of his most hauntingly beautiful collections. Titled "But Beautiful II," the show played on the fragile tension between beauty and decay, where the pastiche of the damaged was made alluring. The models emerged not with faces painted or sculpted by makeup, but hidden behind cracked porcelain masks. These masks, resembling fragile dolls, created an eerie, faceless anonymity that heightened the collection's unsettling mood. It was as though these figures, frozen in time, were relics of a forgotten world, blending beauty with a delicate sense of ruin.
Takahashi’s collection was an embodiment of contrast. Layered, deconstructed garments revealed the tension between softness and severity. Dresses appeared tattered, their edges unfinished, while heavy coats and structured jackets gave form to otherwise amorphous silhouettes. The interplay of fabrics—lace meeting wool, distressed knits against tailored leather—spoke to the idea of beauty formed through destruction, an aesthetic he mastered in this collection. The color palette was equally haunting: muted tones of gray, black, and off-white, with occasional bursts of deep, moody hues, added to the atmosphere of controlled chaos.
The masks were the collection's symbolic centerpiece, representing broken perfection—where beauty was not erased but reframed through a lens of imperfection. By hiding the models' faces, Takahashi allowed the garments and their emotional resonance to speak louder. The cracked faces of the masks became metaphors for the fragility of identity, the masks' delicate fractures hinting at the hidden damage beneath an otherwise serene surface.
