Up for sale here is a nice piece from Undercover’s fall-winter 2015 collection, “No (B)orders”. Undercover has released a number of musician-inspired collections. For this season, although not quite as obvious as some of their others, the main inspiration came from David Bowie. The timing was interesting, as I’m sure this was produced before Bowie died, but the release happened to follow pretty closely after his death.
As usual with Undercover’s music based collections, Bowie served as the sort of muse, where designer Jun Takahashi went through a number of his looks, but also very much filtered them through the Undercover aesthetic, making them a bit more punk in the process.
Influences aside, what you have here is an insulated button down shirt. Fabric is 100% cotton on the interior, lined in cotton on the interior, and filled with a light polyester insulation. This ends up working very well as an insulating piece. It is not quite a down level of insulation, but should certainly help keep you warm in the colder seasons. Silhouette is such that you can wear this as a shirt or a jacket, as there are hand pockets incorporated, as well as an interior pocket for additional storage.
Undercover also excels at little details. You may notice a grid pattern throughout. This is woven on and serves the practical purpose of keeping the insulation in place. Maybe more subtle is the fact that the stitching lines actually line up across the button placket from one side to the other – this takes some planning and is no simple feat. Buttons are tonal throughout, although just for fun the bottom button on the front is a slightly different color. Neck tag is embroidered and side gussets are incorporated as well. Like all Undercover, these shirts were produced in very limited quantities and pretty much impossible to get outside of Japan. Retail was about $400 in Japan and considerably more abroad. This is definitely the cheapest you’ll find it around.
Size is labeled a 3 and fits like a somewhat slim medium. Fit is reasonably tailored and slim in the body. I measure the chest at 20”, shoulders at 17”, length at 29” and sleeves at 25”. The shirt comes in lightly used, very good shape. There is a bit of wear on the neck but otherwise no holes, tears or stains.
Shipping from Japan to anywhere will be $26.