Roots That Won’t Rot: Dr. Martens Grounds UNDERCOVER’s Poisonous 2027 Spring Garden

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• Inside “Poisonous Plants”: UNDERCOVER’s 2027 Spring Summer Show
• Where Dr. Martens Fits Into the Garden
• A Decade-Plus Partnership, Reconsidered
• What We Know — and Don’t — About the Release
• Where to Follow the Drop

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UNDERCOVER closed out Paris Fashion Week’s menswear season with a collection that smells faintly of cut flowers left a day too long in the vase — which, for Jun Takahashi, is precisely the point. The 2027 Spring Summer show, themed “Poisonous Plants,” marked the designer’s first collect with Belgian painter Michaël Borremans in eleven years, and it arrived with a supporting cast of brand partners stitched into the relaxed-wear thesis: VANS, KIJIMA TAKAYUKI, Eastpak, and — grounding the whole presentation in something sturdier than linen — Dr. Martens.

For a label that built its reputation on multi-layered, reference-heavy design, the return of a footwear partner with this much shared history feels less like a guest appearance and more like a constant being reintroduced after a long absence.

 

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Takahashi has spent more of his recent years painting, and that habit reshaped how he looked at Borremans’ work this time around. Where the pair’s last flew — 2016’s “Instant Calm” — sent a single eerie portrait, “Black Mould,” out into the world on the back of a fishtail parka, “Poisonous Plants” pulls from across Borremans’ catalog: the red-and-blue-liveried boys of his “Lakei” series, the shadowed stillness of his “Magnetics” portraits, and his recurring fascination with flowers caught mid-wilt.

That last image became the collection’s organizing idea. Crinkly reversible linen jackets, oversized cardigans made from paper and rayon, and sweatshirts with hidden slashes at the elbow all carried Borremans’ florals worked into what the brand calls “sophisticated materials” — trompe-l’œil techniques and offbeat construction that let danger hide inside something that reads, at first glance, as gentle. Cotton flak vests and leather jackets with clip fastenings filled out the outerwear, while polka dots, lace flowers, and stylized teardrops turned up on patchwork shorts and quilted robes in red and blue. It’s some of the most wearable UNDERCOVER has felt in years — “relaxed wear,” in the brand’s own phrasing, with comfort treated as a feature rather than a concession.

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Each of the four convincers was handed a different job inside the collection’s “day object” logic. VANS supplied the kind of low, scuffable shoe built to disappear into a wardrobe rather than announce themselves; KIJIMA TAKAYUKI is presumed to have handled headwear, as he typically does in UNDERCOVER tie-ups; Eastpak turned its backpacks into something with a little more menace stitched into the lining. Dr. Martens, meanwhile, was tasked with the boots — the piece of the collection built to outlast the trend cycle it’s nominally a part of.

That framing fits. Across more than a decade of joint releases, the Dr. Martens partner has never been the loudest part of an UNDERCOVER collide roster, but it’s consistently been the most durable — literally and otherwise.

 

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Dr. Martens has called Takahashi one of its longest-running design partners, and the archive backs that up. The two brands first linked on 2019’s “New Warriors” capsule, which took UNDERCOVER’s SS19 branding — itself a nod to the 1979 cult film The Warriors — onto the 1460 eight-eye boot and 1461 three-eye derby. A year later, Takahashi contributed a black corduroy 1460 to the “1460 Remastered” series marking the boot’s 60th anniversary, embroidering it with “S” and “N” for “Spiritual Noise,” one of the label’s recurring slogans. The most recent widely documented chapter, January 2023’s SS23 capsule, reworked the 1461 three-eye shoe in black, cherry red, and blue smooth leather, printed with a grid-check pattern pulled from UNDERCOVER’s own archive and stamped with the brand’s “WE MAKE NOISE NOT CLOTHES” sign-off — each pair handcrafted, as ever, at Dr. Martens’ original Wollaston factory in England.

That run of collisions is worth dwelling on because it’s the throughline that makes Dr. Martens’ presence in “Poisonous Plants” feel inevitable rather than incidental. Where Borremans’ return after eleven years is the headline, the Dr. Martens relationship has barely had a gap year since 2019 — making it one of the steadiest footwear partnerships in UNDERCOVER’s collab history, alongside its long-running Nike and Converse tie-ups.

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What’s confirmed, as of this writing: Dr. Martens appeared as one of four named collaborators on UNDERCOVER’s 2027 Spring Summer runway in Paris, with its contribution described by show coverage specifically as boots rather than the low-profile shoe silhouette VANS was assigned. The presentation took place during Paris Men’s Fashion Week in late June 2026, with the “Poisonous Plants” theme and the Borremans collaboration as the collection’s clear editorial hook.

What isn’t yet confirmed: the specific silhouette (whether this builds on the 1461, the 1460, or something new to the partnership), colorways, pricing, or a release date. Neither brand’s official collide page nor either company’s social channels had published product-specific details for this exact capsule at the time of writing — unsurprising given the show closed only days ago, and Dr. Martens collaborations have historically followed runway reveals by weeks or months before retail details land. Readers chasing release-date specifics should treat any third-party listing claiming otherwise with caution until Dr. Martens or UNDERCOVER confirm directly.

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For confirmation on silhouette, colorways, and release timing, the most reliable sources will be the brands’ own channels. UNDERCOVER posts collide rel details on its official Instagram and official X account, both run out of Tokyo. Dr. Martens’ global handles — Instagram and X — typically post collaboration launches simultaneously across markets, while the brand’s Japan-specific Instagram and Japan X account tend to carry market-specific release windows and Japan-exclusive details, which is worth watching given UNDERCOVER’s Tokyo base and history of Japan-first or Japan-exclusive collide rels.