Is shouldn’t be surprising that Jun Takahashi is a Twin Peaks aficionado. There are any number of parallels between the designer’s embrace of strangeness and the unsettling series by David Lynch that has stood the test of time. With official authorization, this collection made use of title graphics, a series of stills from key moments—some color-filtered—and other symbols such as the Double R diner. The clothes checked every wearable box: outer layers that could withstand the Northwest weather; casual athletic pieces in burgundy and forest green; gray suits that riffed on roomy ‘90s silhouettes. Notably, the images were not screen-printed but rather jacquards, meaning that they were embedded within actual fabric and then patched onto the clothes—a more complicated process attesting to Takahashi’s technique-based approach.
Elsewhere, with Angelo Badalamenti’s score from the series wafting through the showroom, embroideries of mini crosses floated across chinos and shirts, scattered here and there or in larger clusters. Plaids were enlarged and interpreted in streetwear and workwear shapes while Takahashi’s doodles ended up on shirts and a down coat. Two characters faced each other with speech bubbles. “Can I ask something?” said one. “No,” said the other. A conversation killer becomes a conversation starter.
This collection’s title, “Wonderful and Strange” came courtesy of a quote from Agent Cooper, “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.” One can only guess what the director will make of the collection, while everyone else will need to determine whether they are comfortable being out in the world wearing jackets emblazoned with Cooper smoking a cigarette or Laura Palmer’s post-mortem face. But in these uncertain times, perhaps dressing through a Lynchian lens becomes a kind of mordant defense.
