Maison Mihara Yasuhiro: the shoemaker who melted the sole
Most designers come to footwear after clothing. Mihara Yasuhiro did it the other way round. He started out as a shoemaker, taught himself the craft as a student, and built a fashion house on top of it. Thirty years on, Maison Mihara Yasuhiro still treats the shoe as the starting point, and the clothes follow the same instinct: take something familiar, then pull it slightly out of shape.
From Nagasaki to the shoe factory
Mihara was born in Nagasaki in 1972. In 1993 he moved to Tokyo to study textiles at Tama Art University, and a year later he began teaching himself to make shoes. What interested him was not the shoe as an art object but the shoe you wear every day, so he went to learn the trade where it actually happens: in a shoe factory. While still at university he made his first pair, with a design idea he would come back to again and again.
In 1996 he launched his first label, archi doom, and shortly after that the line that carried his own name. What began as a shoe brand grew into a full fashion collection. By the end of the 1990s he was showing clothing in Tokyo.
Puma, Milan and Paris
His work soon caught the attention of the sportswear industry. Mihara worked with Puma from 1999, and Puma by Mihara Yasuhiro debuted in 2000. The partnership brought his deconstructed take on athletic shoes to a much wider audience.
In 2004 he showed outside Japan for the first time, at Milan Fashion Week, and later moved on to Paris. Today Maison Mihara Yasuhiro is a member of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode and presents its menswear on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar.
The Original Sole
If there is one thing people recognise, it is the sole. The Original Sole line pays tribute to classic sneaker shapes, the kind of canvas and leather low-tops everyone knows, and then gives them a chunky, seemingly melted sole that looks hand-moulded. The shapes are worked out in 3D and then reproduced in clay, which is why every model looks a little like a sculpture of a sneaker rather than a straight copy. Model names such as the Peterson, the Hank and the George have become shorthand for the brand.
The joke works because the craft is serious. Look closely and the proportions, the stitching and the materials are all considered; the distortion is a deliberate choice, not an accident.
Stoic, but playful
The brand describes its clothing as stoic yet playful, and that is a good way to read the collections. The base is classic menswear: shirts, knitwear, blousons, straight trousers. Then something shifts. A layer is doubled, a seam is exposed, a garment looks vintage before you have worn it. It is clothing that rewards a second look without shouting on the first.
What we have
Our new Maison Mihara Yasuhiro delivery starts, fittingly, with shoes: the Jackson low-top in intertwined leather, in black and in beige. Around it sits a compact wardrobe. There is the Blouson in gray and the Pants in gray, a Cardigan in black, the Pullover in white and in black, and two shirts, the Shirts in black and the Shirts in brown. Easy pieces on their own, and a good introduction to how the brand bends the basics.
Fit
Maison Mihara Yasuhiro uses numbered sizes rather than letters, and the sneakers come in European sizing. Check the size guide on each product page before ordering, and get in touch with the store if you are unsure between two sizes.
At ANSH46
Shop Maison Mihara Yasuhiro online, browse more menswear, or try the shoes on at our store on the Van Oldenbarneveltstraat in Rotterdam.