These Paris Fashion Week Dresses Were Full of Live Butterflies

At the Undercover Spring 2024 show yesterday, the score from Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire played. The 1987 romantic fantasy is about invisible angels living in Berlin, trying to comfort a group of sad humans. Undercover creative director Jun Takahashi was clearly inspired by the angelic, and his collection of dresses with transparent shrouding and transparent organza tailoring comforted a group of very real sad humans: fashion industry professionals complaining that Paris was looking a little too bleak and wearable this season.

While designers have been sending out clothing for real life (or, some might even argue, the afterlife, with so much black everywhere), Takahashi sent out pieces built for something far more divine. When the lights went down, guests thought the show was over, but instead, three models in strapless dresses floated down the runway, appearing to glow from within. Their clear skirts were serving as terrariums, specked with real flowers and filled with live butterflies dancing about.

The moment quickly went viral, with fans online exclaiming the dresses had made them fall in love with fashion again this season. Some compared it to the sort of magical creation one might see in a Studio Ghibli movie or a Disney fairy tale. Others said it reminded them of the kind of dresses they would dream up as a child.

And it’s true—the dresses felt like something invented by a wide-eyed kid, which is why it’s so delightful to see thousands of otherwise fairly serious adults fawning over them. It’s easy to be cynical these days, about clothing and everything else, but Takahashi offered up a welcome and heavenly distraction.

Backstage, the designer mentioned morality and shared that he was grieving for people he was close to. His translator said, “He feels like he’s stuck in the world, but he wants to release himself.” Throughout the collection, Takahashi expressed this idea literally, with the transparent materials of his garments revealing items like playing cards or razors. He took banal instances of humanity, often just hidden away in pockets, and put them on display behind shrouding, transforming them into something phantasmagorical.

But nothing felt more otherworldly than his terrarium dresses, which freed everyone in the audience from themselves for a brief moment of fashion fantasy. The butterflies, too, he assured us, would be released after the show.

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