Like a rebellious band member or an unruly lover, Takahiro Miyashita has a talent for breaking up and making up. The 53-year-old Japanese designer, who founded cult label Number (N)ine in 1997, is relaunching the brand 15 years after stepping away from it.
After leaving, he started TakahiroMiyashitaTheSoloist (The Soloist for short) but departed last year with an elusive Instagram post that read: “Rock and Roll never dies… The music keeps on playing, louder and louder. Just on a different stage. A new band, a new noise, catch me there.” It was a teaser for his return to Number (N)ine—though the details around the launch were as mysterious as the designer himself. So I went to meet him.
On a rain-drenched day in Tokyo, I arrive at a boardroom in his PR’s office, unsure what to expect. Miyashita is known for being guarded, and interviews with him are rare, as are photographs of him. His reticence previously earned him the nickname Taka the Oyster. Eugene Rabkin, the founder of the magazine StyleZeitgeist and one of the handful of journalists to have met Miyashita, says the designer was cautious during their first interview in 2017. “I think that’s because he is careful that his work is precisely understood, but we bonded over our mutual love of youth culture, and we have kept in touch,” Rabkin says. “He is one of the most genuine people I know.”
When Miyashita arrives, he is dressed from head to toe in black. Spectacles hang from a thick black chain around his neck, and he wears a nylon Patagonia windbreaker. He is known for sensitive designs and a deep, melancholic love for music and poetry, but the first impression he gives off is confident—tough, even. “I don’t open up easily,” he says. “I’m a closed-off person. I’ve always said that what I want to say and communicate is expressed through my designs, so I don’t think interviews are important.” Under his left eye is a small tattoo of a teardrop—a symbol that I’ve heard gang members in the USA get after they’ve committed murder. Gulp. But the reason behind Miyashita’s is innocent. “I didn’t know the meaning of it when I got it,” he laughs. “I haven’t killed anyone. I just think shedding tears is an important, beautiful thing.”
The most dangerous thing about Miyashita is his knack for leaving audiences stunned—or even weeping—at his runway shows, which often feature waifish models in romantic clothing. He is fashion’s original sad boy. The designs he has shown over the past three decades, spanning gorpcore to grunge, have been crafted with masterful sensitivity, an intoxicating balance of punk and poetry. Even the simplest garments have been enlivened with delicate details: a whisper of lace on a hemline or the edged neck on a tank top. Romance has appeared in dandyish jackets given panels of brocade and Americana inspired by Miyashita’s formative travels to the States as a teen. I remember, after one of his Paris shows for The Soloist in 2018, a usually stern buying director, sparing with her praise, reverently whispered: “It’s absolutely incredible what he does.”
Number (N)ine’s relaunch has been brewing for years. “I started thinking a lot about the future during the pandemic,” Miyashita says. “I’d never really heard of a fashion brand reuniting, restarting, or reviving [from the owner], so I thought it might be fun to try it.” Though he publicly announced his departure from The Soloist in July 2025, he had actually become an external contractor for the company four years earlier, significantly scaling back his involvement. “I’m sorry to my fans, but the truth is that four years ago, my feelings drifted away from it,” he says.
His first label’s history is also long and complex. When Miyashita left Number (N)ine, the brand continued, albeit in a much-reduced capacity, with a different logo and no creative involvement from Miyashita himself. He retained sole ownership of the scripted logo with his name. “I just want to quietly resume Number (N)ine on my own,” he says. A simple way for fans to differentiate is the font: “You can assume that anything that doesn’t have my handwritten cursive name isn’t my Number (N)ine.”
Long after Miyashita left, the original label has enjoyed remarkable longevity and cultural relevance as an archive fashion brand, gaining clout among young millennial and Gen Z fans who missed it the first time around. EsDeeKid, the anonymous Liverpool rapper who sat front row at Gucci this season, even has a freestyle named after the brand: “Number (N)ine on me top, it cost a pretty penny.” Grungy sweaters, T-shirts featuring skulls and Mickey Mouse, and cargo sweatpants from Miyashita’s early collectsions routinely sell on platforms like Grailed for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Miyashita says the audience will always be a big part of Number (N)ine but the former chapter is done: The new iteration will be no archive rehash. “I should apologize from the start to anyone who is expecting something like what we made in the past,” he says. “It won’t be anything like that at all. I’d like the world to have forgotten about me for a while and then see me with fresh eyes.”
As our chat goes on, the Miyashita I find is not prickly or intimidating but charming, opinionated, and unapologetic—Japanese fashion’s answer to a Gallagher brother. A lanyard from last year’s Oasis tour hangs around his neck. “The most perfect reunion I’ve ever seen,” he says. “And to be honest, when the rumors of it first started circulating, I thought a Number (N)ine comeback was on the cards too.” Lately he’s been enjoying Irish folk-punk band The Cardinals: “It feels like we’re finally seeing a real rock band again.” An avid cyclist, Miyashita regularly zips around Asakusa on an electric bike that he’s been modifying in his spare time. “That’s what a true fashion designer is!” he says. “Creative directors just have other people make things for them, but you can’t call yourself a fashion designer unless you can turn zero into one and take it to 100.”
Though the brand’s launch officially happens today (aptly on the ninth), fans will have to wait a while longer before Miyashita puts out a full collectsion; he makes no promises when that may be. Instead, the brand will relaunch with a simple T-shirt, printed with the handwritten Number (N)ine logo and excerpts from various poems by Arthur Rimbaud.
“It’s a way to say hello,” says Miyashita. And what can we expect next? “It’s definitely going to be different from The Soloist—something more impulsive that will bring out more of my inner self. Number (N)ine is my life, after all.” He intends the brand to operate largely on a made-to-order basis, unbound by seasons, and be initially available only for purchase in Japan; exclusivity is baked in. “I can’t stand the idea of things I’ve worked so hard to create being posted all over social media,” he says. “Clothes aren’t easy to make, so they shouldn’t be easily consumed.”
What about a return to the runway? “Right now, Paris is a school play and I’d be embarrassed to be part of it,” he says. “Unless someone comes along who I think is the real deal, someone I’m willing to take on, I have no intention of showing there.” He has choice words for our current era of quiet luxury too: “I belong to a different world. I prefer the idea of a quiet riot.”
He is equally unenthused by the idea that a fashion brand should reach everyone. “It’s no good just trying to be popular,” he says. “You have to give them a little middle finger. That’s fashion. You can’t get along with everyone.” Miyashita is no cynic, however, and holds out plenty of hope for the next generation. “I’m really interested in new designers, and I want to challenge someone young and powerful. People have always told me that fashion is not a competition, but I don’t want to lose to anyone.” He leans back. “For me, it’s a battle.”
Number (N)ine by Takahiro Miyashita launches today.
