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The Soloist is back in Paris. Not on the runway (at least not yet), but a showroom in the city brings him one step closer. Dropping off the Paris schedule in the pandemic, Takahiro Miyashita has since been presenting his collections back in Tokyo where he is based, but the need to spread his wings has been building.
Spending some time on the road in the US in October last year, Miyashita dove deeper into the Americana influences that consistently pepper his collections. Taking cues from Wild West icons Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, Miyashita called his fall collection “Black and White Realism.” The title, his notes explained, was “an imaginary band name for Wyatt and Doc.
It wasn’t meticulously thought out, but its absurdity and catchy ring resonated with me, so I decided to use it.” The collection was thus flavored with cowboy paraphernalia, from concho belts to stetsons. But this is the Soloist, so the rugged buckaroo bravado had been softened and reinterpreted in a show of classic Miyashita romanticism.
The crux of it was about tailoring, namely reimagining and romancing the idea of formal men’s dress, and so these were just about the most sensitively cut tuxedos you ever did see. Some were velvet, some were embroidered tuxedo jackets with daisy jacquard, and some were styled with culottes and skirts, slim or voluminous trousers. These suits were uniformly beautiful, the kind of thing that would stand out for the right reasons on the red carpet—menswear stylists prepping for awards season should take note.
Cotton boxer shorts were worn unbuttoned underneath like bodysuits or open like miniskirts, layered over suit trousers or just bare legs (the latter is a recurrent Soloist styling quirk that speaks to a kind of undressed masculine vulnerability). The bottoms of long coats were festooned with popper buttons that could be fastened at the thighs, too, transforming them into jumpsuits. Elsewhere were pin-tuck shirts covered in permanent marker scribbles, replicated from a signed last-day-of-school shirt the designer had found in a vintage store, as well as capes, lavallière shirts tied louchley into bows at the neck, and tux jackets that were puffed up like down vests.
Everything came together to create a beautifully broken sense of formality. It was all part of Miyashita’s master plan to remedy what he sees as a dearth of sensitivity in fashion. “The clothes we see today lack sweetness,” his notes explained.
“They’re simply oversized or undersized versions of generic garments, devoid of sensuality. But for me, sweetness has always been a favorite and always will be.” Bang bang—this was another Soloist collection that hit straight to the heart.
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