Miyako Nakamura on How She Styles Her MM

December 20, 2017 | Filed in: Humans of MM

No one wears MM like our Creative Director and recent WWD 40 Under 40 honoree Miyako Nakamura. We recently asked her to style herself exclusively in MM, and watched in awe as she put together four incredibly fashion-forward and unexpected looks: pulling from our loungewear collection, opting for dresses as outerwear, and sizing up—sometimes way, way, way up—on everything. Below, she shares her philosophy on experimenting with styling for design inspiration, and unlocking the potential of what clothing can do.

I love mixing pieces together—taking an item that’s very feminine, and then wearing it with something very masculine, or something that’s very decorative paired with something very simple. I really like playing with those extremes. For this shoot, I was pulling from our main collection as well as our holiday collection, and wearing just about everything in a much larger size than normal. Here, I wore the Gwen dress underneath our silk pajama top, and then I put the Jacqueline dress over it as a coat.

Miyako wears the Jacqueline dress, the Silk Pajama top, the Gwen dress, and the Vanessa pump.

I get a lot of my design ideas from experimenting in this way, and it gives me inspiration for future collections. When I decided to wear the Jacqueline dress as an outer layer, I thought, Actually, the neckline on the pajama top really works when you flip it up, and I noticed that by wearing the dress open, you can better see the piping on the top. Those are the kinds of things I’ll take with me when designing new pieces.

I love oversize proportions and playing around with bigger silhouettes. Here, I wore our silk slip over the Kaling sweater, with the crossover belt.

Miyako wears the Silk Slip in taupe, the Kaling sweater in taupe, the Crossover belt in mahogany, and the Vanessa pump in black.

To me, sizing is very much a matter of preference. Of course, with some tailored dresses, you should wear them true to size, but for a lot of our pieces, when I go up in size, it adds a certain ease to the fit, which changes the attitude of the whole look. Playing within the range of sizes opens up new possibilities for different silhouettes, and that’s really exciting for me.

Miyako wears the Silk Slip in taupe, the Kaling sweater in taupe, the Crossover belt in mahogany, and the Wilson jacket in Escher houndstooth.

I’m not asking our customer to experiment with her clothes quite so much (after all, she has better things to do). I feel like this is what we do for her—play and experiment and then incorporate those discoveries into future designs.

I think our clothes can be as conservative as you want them to be, or as challenging or fun as you want. Doing this shoot made me realize the incredible freedom that we have within our clothes. And I think that is hopefully true for our customer as well—that she can create a look that reflects her own personal style, using our product.