So what was going on with the black felt fireman hats, old-school police hats, and jockey caps? Why did so many models wear waistcoats that looked like they’d been forcibly wrenched to the left of the body in a bar fight? And the kangaroo pocket pleat-bib shirt smocks? What was with Mickey Mouse? Tom Ford says long johns are an outerwear option now—when did you get that memo?
“This is all just my style,” said Takahiro Miyashita, his expression obliquely refracted through his John Lennon glasses after this interesting show. The collection seemed to be a kind of imaginative boyhood view of tropes of uniform—the clothes that authority figures wear—all mussed up by a purposely blurred focus. There was a heavily gestalt feeling at play, yet the parts that made up the sum were in fact the meat and potatoes of this richly blended stew of auto-referential menswear.
This was a collection based upon the aspirations of manhood we aspire to when immature, eroded by the knowledge gained through maturity. It was about lost love—love squandered—and idiocy. Yes, it was also about a collaboration with Converse that introduced a new pimp-soled postmodern expression of Chuck. The collection was called Duet, but it was really a series of duets between Miyashita and his references. Between them they created a handsome, soaring chorus in which the disappointment inherent in aspiring to fit into the uniform of masculine codes, and then falling short of their impossible standards, hung long and slow in the air. Miyashita called this “a love song for fashion” and it was real love, true love, tough love. With externally worn underwear—baring your soul, Soloist style.
