“This collection can be considered a failure!” said Mihara Yasuhiro brightly. Backstage before his show at the Salle Wagram this afternoon, the Tokyo designer was explaining how this season he had taken cues from places hitherto unexplored in his work.
“I’ve actually hidden something whenever I’ve been interviewed,” he continued. “When asked which designers have influenced me, I always say Margiela, Gaultier, or Yohji, but the truth is I’ve been heavily influenced by Margaret Howell and Ralph Lauren. Lately, quiet luxury, minimalism, and normcore have become big trends in fashion. I wanted to catch the train and ride along with them, but I ended up at the wrong station.”
Sure enough, this wasn’t his best show. And the pounding monotonous music, the tiny cramped seating, and the unenthusiastic applause when it was all over didn’t help. But if you could look past all of that, there were plenty of wardrobe highlights to appreciate in this comparatively pared back collection.
To wit: a chocolate brown duffle coat that folded under at the hem and was chicly cropped, the draped corduroy pants (corduroy is truly everywhere this men’s season), and the asymmetric suits all showed off the designer’s talent for cutting that sometimes gets lost in his wackier collections. The sense of RL prep indeed came through in the asymmetric blazers, smart shirts and repp ties, which went surprisingly well with the deconstructed bomber jackets that peeled off the shoulders in double layers, the sticker-laden sweatpants, and puffed-up flannel shirts that appeared elsewhere.
It was the designer’s struggle against the state of fashion, which can be summed up as safe and tentative: two things that, however he might try, he just isn’t. “Right now, we’re in a unique situation where normcore and effortless fashion have merged, and I think it’s made it difficult for designers to try out different creations,” he said. “This experience made me realize that we’re designers who tried to jump on the trend but didn’t succeed.” The takeaway: Why be normal when you can be yourself?
