NICOLE PHELPS Designers are finding all sorts of ways to address the state of our disunion this season. Some turn to glitter, others to pantsuits and “serious” fare, still more to slogan tees. The Japanese designer Jun Takahashi, who has long melded a high-concept mind-set with a knack for making desirable, not-too-difficult-to-understand clothes, conjured a utopia on his runway today. “In an ideal world, everybody would be equal,” he said backstage, when asked what the word means to him. More performance piece than traditional fashion show, with a soundtrack assembled by Thom Yorke, Takahashi’s collection was divided into segments. There were 10 in all, starting with aristocrats, ending with the monarchy, and including soldiers, young rebels, the clergy, and a new species. At this point, you might be wondering why Takahashi’s utopia needs classes if everybody’s equal? The thing about his imagined world is that the uniform of each category, no matter the rank or position, came with flourishes. His aristocrats wore hand-knit gowns, one or two of them moth-eaten, with grand, accordion-pleated boleros and shards of face jewelry jutting from foreheads and cheekbones, while the wardens’ printed jumpsuits were topped with harnesses and hats covered in flamboyant 2-foot-long feathers. Takahashi didn’t erase difference—there’d be no fun in that for a fashion designer—he celebrated it. If that sounds trite, it absolutely wasn’t. In fact, cycling through the different groups and culminating with the queen, who wore accordion-pleated skirts and Princess Leia buns, and did a brief interpretative dance, felt like a rite, or a ceremony. Which is an idea that Rick Owens, a fashion philosopher of a different persuasion, landed upon yesterday. But an enthralling spectacle is one thing. There were amazing things to buy and wear here: from the shrunken puffers and hybridized sweaters of the clergy and the agitators to the voluminous printed shrugs of the choir. At the end of the show, Takahashi had a line of believers ready to sign up.