The worn layers of brocade and lace looked Shakespearean to some in the audience. Others nursed images of exhausted conquistadores hauling themselves out of the surf on the shores of the Yucatán. Well, think again, you wild-eyed dreamers. The extraordinary detailing in Takahiro Miyashita's current (and last) collection offering was inspired by the curtains, carpets, and fixings of a hotel room in Alaska, where the designer found himself trapped during one of his road trips. Think of Alexander Supertramp ? The collection was called "A closed feeling", so one assumes the room was on the small side. The gold brocade ? A sofa. The ornate buttons ? Plucked off that sofa. The ruching ? Curtains, obviously. The tassels ? A riff on a curtain tieback. You could play this game on and on. Even the fur in the collection was a transmutation of the animals stuffed and mounted in Miyashita's hotel room. And does that mean the netting concealing the faces of the models could be construed as a metaphor for the anonymity of hotel life ?
The immaculate, obsessive execution of Miyashita's clothes is always enthralling, and the designer's lifelong passion for punk and grunge balanced the fustiness of his inspiration (there was the odd tang of mosh pit). And it was great to see the models carrying books rather than totes. But why did the invitation feature a great big ice-cream sundae ? "Ask my brain", whispered the designer.
The immaculate, obsessive execution of Miyashita's clothes is always enthralling, and the designer's lifelong passion for punk and grunge balanced the fustiness of his inspiration (there was the odd tang of mosh pit). And it was great to see the models carrying books rather than totes. But why did the invitation feature a great big ice-cream sundae ? "Ask my brain", whispered the designer.
