A member of the new guard of Japanese designers currently
carving their niche outside Nippon, Mihara Yasuhiro brings a fresh vision to
the menswear circuit every season. AW13 explored the slick style and devil may
care attitude of Chinpara (which means “punk” in Japan), while inspirations
prior have ranged from 1950’s biker gangs to youth culture and the navy. It
would appear Mihara was logging onto the Rotten/Vicious connotations of the
word when he referred to "the non-conformist attitudes of the
seventies" in the notes that accompanied his presentation. But look up
"punk" and you'll find that the word used to mean
"gangster," and that rang much truer with the story Mihara was
telling on his catwalk. Don't think Black Flag, think Black Rain, a 1989 movie
by Ridley Scott that starred Michael Douglas as a cop facing down Yakuza, the
local mafia, in Tokyo. They were just the kind of hard-faced, slicked-back,
sharp-dressed young men Mihara offered up as models tonight. "Violent, but
with their own culture," he explained postshow. Like a gang, in other
words, or maybe even a secret society.
The skull-and-crossbones embroidery was typical of the
Sukajan jackets worn by Japanese thugs. The tone-on-tone print on a jacket
could have been yakuza tattoos. Reptile prints and weaves also suggested the
snakes that are stalwarts of gang tattoos. When Mihara gilded a snakeskin suit,
it was just the sort of outfit you'd imagine an arrogant young hood donning to
draw attention to himself, though anyone who stared too long would get a good
kicking from the wearer's solid metal-toed shoes.
In this context, there was a bizarre delicacy in the
traditional embroidery techniques used to weave real gold through a
python-patterned suit and matching puffer vest. But the dark inspiration
weighed heavy on the collection. The palette was somber, mostly black and charcoal,
bar some flash-the-cash prints. The silhouettes tended toward the lean
formality that seems to be the favorite of gangsters everywhere. Mihara is such
an expert technician that his hybrid of biker and puffa jackets could be a
must-have piece of outerwear come Fall 2013. Though disparate in theme, Yasuhiro’s
collections are unmistakeable in the urban earthiness that ties each one
together.
