A head of flouncy curls made Billy Willis straightforward to identify as he was strolling by London on a Saturday in March. Mr. Willis’s hair, alongside along with his layers of free pleats in cool tones, gave him an elegantly refined circulate.
Whereas describing his ensemble, he confirmed what I had thought upon seeing it: that the clothes was all Issey Miyake (particularly, from the model’s Homme Plissé line). It turned out that Mr. Willis, 21, labored at a close-by Issey Miyake retailer and was on a break after we met. However he was a fan of the label and its eponymous Japanese designer lengthy earlier than he obtained the job a few 12 months and a half in the past.
“I obtained my first piece at 14 from a buddy who was shopping for some items from the ’90s,” Mr. Willis mentioned. He added that his sartorial inspirations included individuals he described as “by chance effectively dressed” or, as he put it, those that “don’t have any intention of being trendy.”
“They’ve simply discovered a method that works for them and developed it all through their life, which regularly results in their garments telling attention-grabbing tales,” he mentioned. As for his hair, he defined that he began rising it out seven years in the past when he was on the lookout for methods to model his thick, fuzzy curls. “It simply caught ever since,” Mr. Willis mentioned, “and I believe the model unintentionally guided how my means of dressing has developed. And it retains my ears heat in winter!”
