Takahiro Miyashita
Interview (2022)
We hear you’re from Tokyo. What type of environment did you grow up in?I was born in the wards of Tokyo, but there wasn’t anything all that unusual about my neighborhood. That said, I did live close enough to places like Ginza or Ueno that I could walk or ride my bike there, so I think I may have come into contact with fashion early compared to others.
Around what age would you say you started thinking about fashion?I was already picking out my own clothes when I was 10 or so.
Do you remember what sort of personal standards you were using to choose clothes at the time?I think the first time (I picked out my clothes) was probably with some influence from my older brother or mother. My mother would take me along with her to any movies or exhibitions she wanted to see relatively often, so our relationship was a little different than that of a normal parent and child. When we would go to a department store, she would say, “Go pick out two shirts for yourself from out of these here to those over there,” and let me choose even though I was still a child. Though I would always wonder why I had to choose from this specific area, in due time I had built up my own set of standards, like “this brand makes good things” and so on. I was already going to Harajuku to look at clothes by myself by the time I was in my sixth year of elementary school.
What type of clothes did you like to wear as a teen?Ameyoko was nearby and had been a hangout of mine since I was little, so naturally I would look at the clothes sold there, too. So American clothes were my starting point and has been my axis, I think. I’m sure there were some non-American things in my wardrobe too, but I’ve never been the type to care too much about where a particular garment is made, so a lot of the time I would actually just pick out after a quick glance. I’m still that way even now.
Before you started NUMBER (N)INE, you worked as a buyer at Nepenthes, right?I had been working part-time at all kinds of clothing stores since I was 15, so when I got hired on at Nepenthes at the age of 19, I already knew quite a few stylists and people in this industry and was pretty much an adult in my own right. My first part-time job was at a western clothes store, and then at 16 I went to Propeller, then Beams when I was 18, and later I was able to get some study in on how to be a stylist at a publishing company. In between all this I did my best to learn on my own, too, doing things like going to America twice to check out clothes there. So while Nepenthes may have been my first real job, at the same time it was also kind of like a university for me where I was able to finish my education. That said, I’m still learning even today.
After so much experience working with clothes, how did you decide that you wanted to start making your own?I think my experiences at Nepenthes played a big part in that. I was blessed with opportunities to meet fashion designers from all over America during my time there, and while handling the clothes they made there was lots of moments where I found myself thinking things like, “This is a really nice garment, but it’d be better without this pocket here,” or “These buttons would look better placed differently.” While these kinds of “quirks” in the clothing are where the designer’s personality comes through, I was full of ideas about how I would do things differently. I guess I’ve always had that kind of temperament. The president of Nepenthes couldn’t help but notice this in me and said, “Okay, then why don’t you try something?” and placed me in charge of an original project. I had done other special-order projects before that as well, so starting to make clothes with my own ideas was a very obvious choice.
Would you say that you going independent was also a natural progression of things rather than something that took a lot of determination on your part?Simply put, fashion was the thing I was most interested in, and the only thing I was fairly certain I could do at the time. So, if we’re speaking strictly of the beginning, it wasn’t like going independent was something I felt prompted to do because I was upset.
But you did get upset later?I’ve been upset since the very beginning. I get upset because I’m reminded of how untalented and inexperienced I am, because there’s not one single thing good about me. The only thing I can do is to keep studying and applying myself.
So you’re saying that your reasons for being upset lay within yourself?It’s not that I get worked up because I have some target that I want to beat so much as I get angry with myself. Like, “Why is this the best I can do?” That said, there is a part of my personality that has to have a sense of victory or defeat to stay motivated, so a desire to “win” is also definitely a factor.
What do you mean by “target” here?Sometimes it can be a particular person, and sometimes it can be something that came up in the past, or even history. Practically every day I’m filled with thoughts that “I need to change something right here and now,” so I can never quite escape from these feelings of impatience or urgency.
You disbanded NUMBER (N)INE in 2009. What were your reasons for doing this?Well, it was a band, and I guess it was simply that we had done everything we needed to do as a band. It had swollen up into this enormous thing way larger than I ever wanted it to be and become this environment where I could pretty much make whatever I wanted. It was a situation where whatever we did was given passing marks, so while I’m sure we did make some stuff that was actually good, we weren’t really doing anything that I thought was particularly satisfying. I know a lot of people out there don’t understand why we called it quits, and in fact we probably could have kept it up forever if we wanted, but I personally was simply exhausted and had wanted to quit for the past few years leading up to that. So the long and short of it is that I did everything I needed to do under that name.
When you put an end to NUMBER (N)INE did you already have an idea that you wanted to start a new brand?No. Back then I was doing photography, making furniture, and fully invested in my band, so starting a brand wasn’t something I had on my mind. Strangely enough, though, despite fashion being what put in such a terrible mental state just a short time earlier, quitting briefly made me keenly aware that in the end, fashion is what I love most. Simply put, this feeling is what prompted me to start TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist.