Mihara Yasuhiro is a supremely chill man. Never one to get swept up in the hectic freneticism of a fashion show, he retains a kind of unimpeachable calm. Backstage before the show, the designer spoke about how he’d been pondering the accelerating complexity of daily life. “It used to be that I woke up, took my time, and had breakfast. But now when I wake up there are emails to check, social media to scroll through. I don’t want to say it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it has definitely made things more complicated.”
This afternoon’s show took place in an underground concrete warehouse in Paris and was soundtracked live by French rapper Take A Mic, who sat at an office desk positioned at the head of the runway and began spitting bars as the models appeared. Dressed in various iterations of distressed workwear—neckties over faded denim shirts, acid-wash cargo pants festooned with pockets and zips, beaten-up corduroy blazers—the models seemed like employees commuting to jobs on a dystopian planet.
Sartorial mutations are Mihara’s bread and butter. This time, sleeves—from grungy plaid shirts, denim jackets, and bulked-up MA1 bombers—were amputated and transformed into scarves, and jeans had asymmetrical waists that spooled out to one side to hold baguettes. There were overcoats sprouting extra sleeves and hirsute dresses that engulfed their wearers in a sea of tassels. Mihara’s previous nods to childhood nostalgia in the form of leather dinosaur bags and banana handle handbags returned, bringing a welcome levity to the grunginess.
In lesser hands, the cacophony of fabrics, accessories, and sheer diversity of garments could get lost in the sauce, but there’s confidence and cohesion in Mihara’s chaos, helped along by his restrained and precise use of color. “Over the past few seasons, I’ve gradually come to realize that it’s more interesting when the puzzle pieces don’t fit together,” he said by way of explanation. Messy, complicated, and all the more real for it—Mihara’s mirror held up to the world.
