At least one company is feeling bullish about the American market. Uniqlo, the Japanese retailer with a store currently in Soho, is opening its largest flagship yet, a vast 89,000-square-foot space at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue. Come Friday, when the sleek glass doors are open to the public, expect crowds to mob the store [...]

The three-day weekend celebrating the spring equinox brought crowds to Kyoto and Osaka, where plum trees showed the first signs of pink blossoms and streets bustled with shoppers.Last week, the stress of what some are calling 3/11, along with the uncertainty of blackouts and earthquakes, made it difficult to focus and work in Tokyo. Many, [...]

Smart, functional design has always been at the heart of Jun Takahashi’s Undercover label. He’s a guy who looks up to industrial designers as much as fashion ones—he wears a leather watch emblazoned with Dieter Rams’ mantra “Less but better,” after all—and has long experimented with technical materials and function-first dressing. (He once shot a [...]

Good news for two of Europe’s best: Raf Simons (left) and Haider Ackermann (right) and have been selected to present their next collections at this summer’s Pitti Uomo and Pitti W_Precollections. Ackermann will show his womenswear at the pre-collection showing in Florence, while Simons will show his Spring ‘11 menswear for Jil Sander at the [...]

Some men have inner demons; Undercover’s Jun Takahashi has his Graces. The lamblike stuffed dolls the Japanese designer invented a few seasons ago have stayed with him ever since, popping up in Undercover’s fashion shows (they sometimes perch on the shoulder of a dress), their own gallery exhibitions, and, soon, at the Diane Pernet-curated SCOPE [...]

The one fault New York gallery types might have with this week’s art offerings is the sheer abundance of them. Should one put off the Biennial to better take in the Armory Show? Dodge the crowds and check out Volta or Pulse? Heed your accountant’s warnings and skip the weekend entirely? Last night at Quality [...]

If he stayed true to his usual routine, Undercover designer Jun Takahashi kept out of the way of any flashbulbs at his label’s presentation today in Paris, which is what makes the Shepherd, an art-slash-history book we’ve been admiring for the past few days, so special. A visual documentary of behind-the-scenes footage of Takahashi and [...]

Grace, an eerie if somewhat comical character created by designer Jun Takahashi, has been making her presence felt for the last several seasons at his Undercover shows. At yesterday’s exhibit-styled presentation, however, she upped her ante: A whole army of Graces, in the form of diamanté and pearl-encrusted figurines, were sitting pretty on the mannequins. [...]