Jun’s work was also instrumental to Japan’s acceptance in the western fashion world as a whole. He blended casual youth culture with precise tailoring, pioneering the idea that streetwear could exist alongside and engage culturally with runway fashion. His early graphic tees may have had humble beginnings, but their ongoing evolution into a vast diary of fantasies and themes was inevitable. Disorder? More like order, two of everything.Founded nearly 30 years ago what would become one of the most charismatic and influential brands today. He threw in a few slight asides to his own withdrawn, nomadic persona-the cowboy hat slung on the shoulder of one look-and was typically (and frustratingly) gnomic when asked to explain this interpretation of disorder/order: “I don’t remember!” To this eye, Miyashita’s postapocalyptic apicultural attire-only sometimes leavened by fringed logo blankets-was a futuristic defense against an undefined scourge to come: some nonspecific disorder.Ĭonclusion? Sometimes compelling, sometimes confusing, sometimes cathartic, this was a kick-ass, semidetached conversation between two of the most thoughtful spirits in menswear. Footwear included boots and rubber geta, and there was-at least to this culturally ignorant eye-an undertow of traditional Japanese dress in the armored complications of bindings and quilted cloaks. The conventional items were either worn beneath the tech or slung like backpacks, but fully wearable and ready to swing into action from the shoulder. The nub of it was a north and south of conventional menswear tailored pieces in houndstooth, check, or all black that were framed by artisanally complicated utilitarian-wear whose technicity was baroque in its beauty. Miyashita presented a far less overtly readable collection only because of his lack of literal references. The final piece was a tattered-hem lilac gown and loose pajama suit with embroideries of the character Poole adrift in space, while the finale itself featured a line of five “astronauts” in primary-color quilted jackets with backlit face masks and zippered jersey pants. Then a swerve to printed pieces showing the moon obelisk and 2001’s hapless crew. For fans of the film, the references continued from there, woven first among looks that included heavily flocked fleece suiting and tracksuits, backwoodsman-in-summer forestry ensembles, HAL 9000 LED-eye fanny packs, and a series of raincoats emblazoned with slowly dawning warnings of digital chaos to come. Then there was a navy version over a white shirt, and then two check iterations with an inbuilt, perhaps metallic-mix, stiffness, and then a final skirt-y look in beige, possibly velvet, possibly terry, that betrayed the first Kubrick reference: a shoulder-slung bag on which was written Caution: Contains Explosive Bolts, a sample from the writing on the escape hatches of the Apollo. To Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” a model emerged in fine-knit gray: a cap, a sweater, and a pleated skirt. Here, he seized upon another unsettling Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, yet at first the reference was repressed. Takahashi’s last women’s show played with the idea of twins and culminated in a bloodcurdling finale re-creation of The Shining’s Grady sisters. To review them, then, demands the collections be treated as they were created: in isolation, just as they are in the Paris showroom of Michèle Montagne, where these designers normally show their menswear. But beyond them they had no idea what each other was planning in their respective studios: “ only saw collection two days ago!” said Chieri Hazu, Takahashi’s translator and right-hand woman. These were the overlaps: the folds in the show structure that contained them both at this remarkable Pitti presentation. And, yes, they consulted on the mutual finale that saw a line of models in black synthetic jeans and crop-top harnesses emerge from Miyashita’s backstage, and an opposing line of models in white floor-length pleated skirts emerge from Takahashi’s. Yes, they agreed on a symmetrically reflective theme-order/disorder against disorder/order-beforehand. According to Jun Takahashi of Undercover, he and Takahiro Miyashita of The Soloist worked on this shared show pretty much in isolation.
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