Sacai and Yohji Yamamoto made happy returns to Paris this season. Sadly, though, Takahiro Miyashita is amongst the majority of pre-pandemic presenting Japanese designers—a group that also includes Anrealage, the Commes crew, Miyake, and Kolor—who have yet to be able revive the inimitable intimacy of showing their clothes to a live audience in fashion’s capital. “Naturally, I’m eager to go back there as soon as possible,” said Miyashita in the now standard pre-written Q&A: “Paris has been and will always hold a special place for me, like blues musicians aspiring to make music in Memphis or Nashville.”
Paris is indeed fashion design’s cradle, but in his absence from it, this most musically-led of designers has continued to riff with passion and precision. This season’s collection was entitled The Era and inspired by “Fifth Beatle” Billy Preston’s improvisational impact on music. Elusive as ever, Miyashita presented a film in which four models wearing balaclavas, cocoon-shaped coats, and skinny jeans were only ever seen from behind (or sometimes fleetingly in on-bicycle profile). The coats, including a pink-to-purple duffle, a shearling, and an elongated black bomber, mostly featured a zipper that ran from the left shoulder down to the right hip. In his notes Miyashita said this was to represent “punctuation” alongside “function.” Flipped “right” side forward in the lookbook you could see these zippers extended forward into the sternum, and similarly punctuated the left leg of some trousers.
The lookbook also suggested that Miyashita was working to rearrange menswear standards via his Preston-inspired improv approach. Without that intimacy of proximity it is impossible to report the more subtle modulations, but in general the designer was imposing a consistent silhouette across various greatest hits in generic menswear; the peacoat, the trench, the aviator, the cardigan, the duffle, and a cool dark furry-looking piece you could see Ringo or George rocking with aplomb. “I find certain redundancy meaningful in garments,” said Miyashita, and you could argue, in agreement with this statement, that his freestyle riffs were ultimately superfluous. And yet they also allowed you to see highly familiar garments in a funkily fresh light, which was probably the point. This was another strong studio session from The Soloist—how cool it will be to see him play with clothes live again.
