Miharayasuhiro (Q7695)
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Miharayasuhiro is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Miharayasuhiro |
Miharayasuhiro is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
head of footwear and accessories design
London is full of beautiful red painted telephone boxes. Nobody uses them anymore, they’re obsolete, but they’re just too iconic to scrap. Today Mihara Yasuhiro found a new use for one of them: The box on the corner of Cavendish Square and Wimpole Street was painted black and covered with photocopied flyers promoting a band called the Blank Mirrors. Once we’d descended through the adjacent entrance into the underground car park below, all became clear-ish. The Blank Mirrors were a fictional band created by the designer as a vehicle for a collection that played with digital existentialism. They were named after the screen of a turned-off smartphone. Two of their made-up members played live: a kind of My Bloody Valentine wall of sound without the mellifluousness.The clothes, though, sung. A mash-up of rockabilly, punk, and contemporary street, there were plenty of Yasuhiro greatest hits in this mix: oversize parkas with mesh panelling, misbuttoned buffalo check shirts topped with seditionist berets, wide-cast beautifully frayed denim, appliquéd bikers, and printed tracksuits. The seasonal signature asserted itself in the decoration: an opening long denim coat with a rust-stained right arm had been stenciled#UNLIMITEDon the back, while the front featured a stick man throwing a hashtag in the trash. A loose knit black sweater said#NOTHINGacross the chest.DONOTTAGMEwent the command at the base of the back of a biker. There were patches featuring wistful images of analogue cassette tapes and Parental Advisory–style declarations of Eternal Avant Garde.So was this resistance or irony? The second; the designer declared himself a fully digitized native backstage. Yet a little like last season’s excellent exercise in anti-branding branding at Lanvin, this was a collection for those who wish to interrogate the givens of a digital now rather than simply tag and repost without question.
11 June 2017
Berets off to Mihara Yasuhiro for zeroing on the question of the moment. “I look around now and see all the young people who are scared about President Trump and what that will mean,” the designer said before this show. Contemplating this contemporary fear led Yasuhiro back to perhaps the last great American uprising against entrenched forces of conservatism and prejudice: the 1960s. Thus those soft wool berets, the dissenting headgear of choice for Black Panthers and Che-inspired Marxist agitators.The show was held in the fern-strewn brutalist oasis of the Barbican Conservatory, through which prowled a first wave of black-clad dissenters in a layered uniform of bikers, sweaters, and loose pants. Rusty russet, then aubergine, blue, and green looks—this was a collection of top to toe color—broke the black stranglehold via outfits for both men and women topped with volumized off-kilter outerwear in Alcantara or high-shine leather. Suiting in earthy brown or that aubergine featured unexpected extra pockets and frayed hem detailing. Micro-check ensembles of tailcoats over long long-shirts came with hidden self-care instructions inside, which read: “Have Fortitude. Never bend your head. Always hold it high.”Compared to many of his collections, this was pared down, almost bare. Yasuhiro said in his rather wonderful way that the whole collection was a forest whose each tree should bear scrutiny for its detail rather than its decoration. At the end, though, expression blossomed. On long coats of mesh was etched THIS IS TOMORROW in colored fur across the back and in an arc across the arms. Accompanied by the beautiful singing of Maïa Barouh and the leather and nut clacking percussion of Leo Komazawa this was a lovely, stirring show to watch.
8 January 2017
For Mihara Yasuhiro’s show, guests were herded underground into the misty car park of Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College. As the show was about to begin, a solitary, dreadlocked figure (later identified as the drummer from the Japanese band Alexandros) paced down the dark, concrete runway toward a drum set placed in its center. When the lights flashed up, the drummer commenced a cymbal-smashing solo, and the models began their march.Yasuhiro is one of those rare designers who make clothes that defy description. You might give it an over-egged go by saying, for example, that the garments he presented for Spring ’17 were a gorgeous assemblage of timeless black-and-white swathes with nigh-selvaged edges that hung from the body in spectral silhouettes, but you still wouldn’t come close to conveying the warm, haunting, and quintessentially Japanese romance that his pieces exude. (For further reading, see Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay on Japanese aesthetics, “In Praise of Shadows.”)The designer cited as his inspiration the historic depths of Japanese clothing, which encompass everything from kimono and yukata to Buddhist robes and imperial army regalia, and models' exposed skin was tattooed with transfers of dragons and butterflies. The aforementioned black and white was consistent throughout, the fabrics softly textured likewashipaper and punctuated only by a few silver chains around the waist and neck. If this all sounds dreadfully old-fashioned, it wasn’t. Yasuhiro incorporated a well-known 1794 kabuki portrait by Toshusai Sharaku onto fabrics, and diffused it into a pixelated spray of dots to modern, wearable effect. The block-fringed beauty Yuka Mannami, currently one of Japan’s most in-demand models, closed the show.
25 October 2016
Karlheinz Weinberger’s documentary record of mid-century Swiss youth doing their utmost to dress like Americans was a powerful influence at Mihara Yasuhiro’s debut London show today. The relocated-from-Paris Japanese designer chose a faded bowling alley as his venue; “King Creole” and other in-his-pomp Elvis numbers made up the preamble soundtrack; and when they came out, the models, male and female, used the lanes as their runway.The closing look’s oversize cowboy belt, horseshoe pendant, and bandana ties were a very literal acknowledgment of the DIY USA style of the teenagers Weinberger discovered, as were the bowling shirts, hand-daubed denim, and a pair of beautiful rivet-seamed oversize jackets. But for this fictional Americana-obsessed youth tribe, christened “No Club Lone Wolf,” Yasuhiro incorporated more contemporarily fundamental items ofRebel Youthattire, too. Long nylon rain jackets and souvenir bombers were bisected by zippers as outsized as that buckle. Hoodies were punctured or patched with DIY emblems. Yasuhiro very literally explored the line of symmetry between different generations’ urge to stamp their own imprint on the American archetype by dividing pieces straight down the middle: one pair of pants’ right leg was wide raw denim, while it’s left was a cargo pocket chino. Above this two-part trouser, a silk bowling shirt was fused to a long-hemmed flannel check work shirt. A denim swing skirt and lace-hemmed slip dresses fused with bowling shirts or souvenir jackets were among the womenswear highlights in a collection whose rigorous fabrication was matched by its imaginative richness.
13 June 2016
Looking back at August Sander’s photos from pre-Nazi Germany—Instagrams from eternity—is poignant and urgent: His subjects appear as right-here, right-now human as you or I, just stranded in a different, turbulent age. Yet only generations divide us. And times change fast. Christophe Lemaire has already cited Sander this season, as have others: TodayMihara Yasuhirostepped deeply into the territory of past lives not so different from ours and dug up a gorgeous but kind of sad collection of clothing from it. The upshot was that the pain of the past can fast become the curse of the present as well.Eh? All this in some men’s clothes—and a few looks on a (very beautiful) woman, too? Oh yes; this reviewer has interrogated plenty of London’s most lauded contemporary artists in their pomp and left less satisfied with the message than at today’s show. The selvage unravelings, the laddered knits, the burnt felt, the emphasis on showing the hand in the handiwork, and the found souvenir patchings of times past were more Turner Prize–worthy than several Turner Prize winners. Best of all, you could exhibit this on yourself. Atmosphere entangled brilliantly in cloth. Afterward the designer—whose English is not the best but whose will to express himself is absolute—said: “I really like fashion. And I think, fashion. . . . What is fashion?” Yasuhiro is his own best answer.
23 January 2016
Founder: Mihara YasuhiroKnown for: Artful details and rich fabric treatments, reconstruction that makes pieces seem like they have been reincarnatedWorn by: Eclectic, artsy typesSpring 2016 inspirations: Art movements—Dada for menswear, New Objectivity for women
13 October 2015
Marcel Duchamp is Mihara Yasuhiro's hero. He loves Dada. It's partly the influence of his mother, a painter, but Yasuhiro's own appetite for collage and an edge of chaos in his clothing also marks him as Dada by nature. "I don't want to make it too obvious," he said during a presentation in his Paris showroom, "so the abnormality is subtle." Or maybe not. Yasuhiro's Spring collection was full of disorienting details: the trompe l'oeil pockets hand-painted on a biker jacket, the shirttails sewn over shorts, the coat that tied with two additional sleeves. His skill as a designer is that he has been able to turn such tricks into a convincing design signature. That's because his clothes never look precious. They've been to hell and back, worn, shredded, patched, ingeniously reconfigured so that the old looks new again. Here, khaki and denim, for instance, were alchemized with wrapping, bias cutting, unexpected volume. But for all the acute technique, there was nothing flashy about these designs. "Fashion is so bright now, patterns are so strong, I want my clothes to be subtle," he said. The collaging of unlikely elements was a Dada trademark. It doesn't sound like the easiest proposition for a collection of menswear. But Yasuhiro continues to give it a grungy, slouchy sex appeal.
29 June 2015
Mihara Yasuhiro has completely changed his look. He's wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. His hair, once dead straight, is a now a mass of curls. "I felt it was time to change my brain," he explained. That's what turning 42 did to him. It had another effect, too. He's been rereadingBe Here Now,the spiritual text by American visionary Ram Dass. It made him reflect on his earliest collections from 15 years ago. He felt freer then, and that was the mood he was chasing with his latest collection.Yasuhiro has always wanted his clothes to tell a story, so they've often been worn, torn, patched, and decorated. "A feeling of time passed," he called it. He's especially keen on the idea of people customizing their own clothes to tell their own stories. That's how he settled on the hobo as the inspiration for Fall 2015. The free spirit, the rambling man, the knight of the road, no fixed address…. "The land was their home, and every state they passed through they'd sew a memento on their clothes," Yasuhiro explained. This patchwork was duplicated in a photo jacquard that was then patched onto coats, jackets, and shirts. There were also pen doodles, like casual aides-mémoires, on other pieces. Denim was de- and reconstructed in an echo of the traditional Japanese Boro technique. Saddle stitching on coats was coming undone, track pants were a wreck, knitwear was laddered, and topstitching trailed unfinished off coats. It was a masterful, poignant expression of the designer's "imperfect aesthetic," where he wants to help people understand how clothes can spark their imagination and their creativity, how fashion canchangethem.It's a wildly idealistic notion, but Yasuhiro is a wild idealist, a Woody Guthrie of the runway. He also has the necessary technical skills to communicate his ideas. Even if things seemed to be thrown together or falling apart, there wasa lotof design in the collection. He has always been a master of interesting hybrids. Here there was a black biker tailored like a blazer, a knit baseball jacket/cape, and a quilted jacket with athletically ribbed waistband and cuffs, along with artfully aged leathers and cleverly draped pants. And mention must be made of the styling. Admittedly, Yasuhiro gave Luke Day and Kim Howells a lot to work with, but they winkled out a superb edit.
24 January 2015
How memories fragment was the gigantic theme that Mihara Yasuhiro took on board for his Miharayasuhiro Spring collection. He had a deeply personal motivation. British stylist Bryan McMahon, who died at the beginning of the year, worked with Mihara for years. In fact, the designer called McMahon his mentor. "I come from the country of the kimono and the original street style," he said. "Bryan brought classic tailoring and elegance to the brand." So Mihara wanted his new collection to stand as a memorial to all their collaborations. Given that these included some of the most memorable menswear productions of the past decade, that promised something special, even more so when Mihara brought in fashion editors Kim Howells and Luke Day, two of the people closest to McMahon. So the collection unfolded as a patchwork of Mihara and McMahon, whose hat and beads accessorized some of the models.Mihara's sterling characteristic has always been the way his clothes can carry a story. They are aged—torn, laddered, frayed—in ways that suggest life-changing experience. The designer agreed that the natural status of the Mihara man is probably refugee. He said he felt like one himself. Probably McMahon did, too. That was in the clothes today: the double layers, with the top layer distressed to reveal the fabric below; the denims with the Freddy Krueger slashes; the tie-dyed knit parka with threads pulling; the pieces patched together to create unusual proportions. There was more to the patterns this season—leopard, paisley—which might have had something to do with McMahon's owneleganza. It loaned the incongruous edge, which is another Mihara signature. And kudos as usual to the footwear, particularly the half-silver/half-suede desert boots.
27 June 2014
Mihara Yasuhiro is a worry. From being one of the inspirational high points of the Paris menswear calendar, with shows that so effectively married cutting-edge tech to a profoundly human touch that could bring tears to the eyes, he has scaled down radically. Now he prefers to show in a boutique in the Palais Royale, with models walking around desultorily to a beat box. Needs must if it's a budget issue, but on a conceptual level Mihara has also downscaled. Where Miharayasuhiro's clothes once had the most peculiar, haunting poetry, they are now a perfectly explicable, linear variation on a theme.Today's, for instance, was a movement called the Tokyo mods, an organic offshoot of the mod movement in London. Skinny-suited, small-boned mod has infiltrated all over this season. Admittedly, Mihara's take is likely to stand as the most original, but by his own standards he showed a subdued, downbeat collection. His signature hybrids were in full effect, like the half-and-half shoes that have developed an ardent following, and the coat-and-parka twofers. There was also his blend of classic Japanese artisanship with urban Tokyo edginess, here exemplified by a fusion of the eighteenth-century artist Ito Jakuchu and the contemporary painter Udaka Kentaru. The result mixed traditional calligraphy with glittering clouds, puddles of shine, and an aggressive, graffiti-like blur. It was the high point of the collection.The music, by the way, sounded like psychobilly heard down a subway tunnel. It was Mihara's own mutant mix of old rock 'n' roll tracks, and when he described it, the lo-fi-ness of the whole presentation suddenly seemed so deliberate that you were left wondering if this was one more genius performance. Guess we'll just have to stay tuned.
18 January 2014