Number (N)ine Menswear Fall 2008: True West

PARIS, Jan 20, 2008 / FR / --- The fascination for the American West is visible from collection to collection in the work of Takahiro Miyashita, the designer of Number(N)ine. Somewhere between Sam Shepard’s True West heroes and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, the Japanese designer seems to be revisiting, season after season, the casual wardrobe of a teenager’s elder brothers.

There is something typically brotherly in the passing on of codes avoiding the age gap to build one’s personality. Hence here undoubtedly the fascination for woodcutter’s traditional checkered shirt, which comes in handy in the season’s trends, just like the jacquard in natural tones and Indian patterns used here on beautiful and ample cardigans.

All pants are cropped at mid-calf level and worn with big socks and laced or low cowboy boots. Faux-furred caps have compulsory parts covering the ears. Some boots are fringed , just like some gloves, native American style.

Although the reference to Kurt Cobaine was obvious in the soundtrack, there was something more to this runway show than a pure revival of the grunge movement, already popular more than two decades ago. The colours seem to be a return to the seventies: beige, orange and red, just like the lumberjack shirts wprn over the pants. Only the pajama bottoms of shiny synthetic fabric looked too gimmick to be worn on the street.

There must be something generational in the collection, some new way of looking at a guy’s cherished pieces of clothing which undoubtedly comes from a genuine fascination for the Marlboro cowboy and Americana. Some subtle nuance that can easily escape anyone over the age of thirty, a meaning for the younger generation which older people don’t get, mjght be the key to these very thought out negligee looks.

Maybe it’s just the cowboys’ feeling of loneliness acquired in big spaces, interpreted in daily wear for younger and more romantic fellas living in the city.

By the way, although the setting was a very dusty (and beautiful) old garage with ruined paint on the walls in the middle of Paris, walking up the alley that led to it, was a very strange vintage small shop selling hunting knives and fishing material. Some gear that could match the pieces presented here today, but obviously also available in this setting to city-dwellers. Ain’t all guys still trappers in our still new century, even when living in a metropolis? Or is it an unconscious longing for the time of playing cowboys and Indians with a brother, a cousin, a neighbour?