TheSoloist is now in its twelfth season and it has gone from strength to strength in terms of Miyashita’s vision. “I feel more free to design for my own label. The clothes are closer to my mind than Number (N)ine,” he told me. Miyashita would return to speaking about his mind as an independent entity that gives birth to ideas that he manifests into clothing. The ideas are never straightforward, nor are the garments – there are virtually no archetypal, sure-sell menswear staples like a perfecto jacket or a trench that Miyashita tinkers with. Menswear is notoriously limited in its offerings and Miyashita takes it as far as it can go. And while he continues to mine youth culture for his references, they are not always readily discernible. For example, the S/S 2017 collection, one that is in stores now, was inspired by David Bowie, but you won’t see anything in the clothes that owes an obvious debt to Bowie’s costumes. Instead, it’s Bowie processed through Miyashita’s singular mind.

When I look at Miyashita’s clothes, I often think that he is the last hippie in fashion, meaning that he is free to do whatever pleases him, practical considerations such as cost constraints be damned. The results, like double-faced cashmere coats can be absolutely stunning (and stunningly expensive). Since TheSoloist’s first season, when Miyashita presented heavily handworked deconstructed tailoring, he has shown time and again that his attention to detail is next to none. So it was with the F/W 17 collection he was presenting now, in which jacket and pant seams were finished with leather piping. What looked like fleece turned out to be a cashmere/wool/silk blend. Even Miyashita’s “basics,” like hoodies and track pants are never basic. The amount of detail in each, such as raw seams, the pulls, the neckline details, are all well thought out and demand one’s careful attention.

“The inside of the garment is my favorite part,” Miyashita said when I asked him about his fascination with detail. As a matter of fact this collection was about taking the lining and making garments out of it. It was deconstruction at its finest – with jackets and fur-lined long tunic coats made from wool ripstop fabric and that closed with tassels, their pockets designed so they could be accessed from the outside and from the inside.