BEAUTY: Clothing--IM (Issey Miyake)

IM as it is now known is the continuation of the brand started by legendary Japanese designer Issey Miyake in 1970. Miyake (previously here), who died in 2022, was highly influential in clothing design and I honestly don't think we would have the likes of Rick Owens or Boris Bidjan Saberi or Damir Doma or Craig Green or even Haider Ackermann without him. The menswear division is now headed by a trio of designers--Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi--who created a Spring Summer '27 show at Paris Fashion Week called "In Praise of Bamboo Shadows."

With references to a 1933 essay about Japanese aesthetics by Jun’Ichiro Tanizaki, the cultural and material significance of bamboo, and the ancient Japanese tale of Princess Kaguya who was discovered inside a bamboo stalk as a child but grows up to return to the night sky, this enchanting collection highlights the best of Miyake silhouettes and cuts. The first oversized coat is lovely, showing actual shadows of bamboo stalks on a white ground. And when not a literal presentation in the form of a hat or chest piece or shoes or the motif of woven bamboo, it showed up in the thread blend of garments, offering a silky texture and flowing appearance! The gradual shift to bamboo greens is so pleasing...

https://us.isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Issey Miyake

On this eve before the start of National Poetry Month, here is clothing as poetry. Issey Miyake FW '26-'27 women's collection. Exquisite.

https://www.isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--IM (Issey Miyake)

IM as it is now known is the continuation of the brand started by legendary Japanese designer Issey Miyake in 1970. Miyake, who died in 2022, was highly influential in clothing design and I honestly don't think we would have the likes of Rick Owens or Boris Bidjan Saberi or Damir Doma or Craig Green or even Haider Ackermann without him. The menswear division is now headed by a trio of designers--Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi--who created a comforting Fall Winter '26-'27 collection at Paris Fashion Week. Miyake was known for creating garments that presented themselves more as buildings or shelters, playing with material and shape to make that happen. And this collection carried on that tradition... sheltering and cocooning seems perfect for a winter collection.

The overarching idea for the palette comes from sunrises and sunsets. The first many looks are dark, reflecting the dark of night and then veers into grey, brown, blue, then an explosion of white. The rest of the looks express a gorgeous array of colors meant to evoke sunsets...especially Look #19 with its peach, grey, and teal strata of light.

But back to the shapes of the garments themselves--we see an exquisite, restrained minimalism with a clear Eastern sense, a hallmark for Miyake. There are some light moments like the extra long neck ties and the very present storm flaps on trenches. The powerful simplicity of each silhouette--even the ones heaped with fabric--is breathtaking: after all, the collection is titled "Formless Form." 

https://isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Misc. Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week just ended and here are some miscellaneous details from the Spring Summer '26 collections that caught my eye:

Kévin Nompeix and Florentin Glémarec of Egonlab paid tribute to Glémarec’s late grandfather, René, who passed away last November aged 90. He had been a great early supporter of Egonlab, appearing in the brand's creations at every outing. Glémarec’s grandfather and family are from Breton so the duo used motifs of that region, including lace, to pay homage.

3.Paradis, Emeric Tchatchoua's brand, showed a collection inspired by the classic children's book (for grown-ups too!), "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Little One showed up on a sweater and a camp shirt, but references to other parts of the book surfaced: the plane flown by the pilot, the doodle of a snake swallowing an elephant, the flock of wild birds that carried the Little Prince from his home planet, and more abstractly, pieces in gloriously saturated colors of a desert sunset as well as desert camouflage (models walked a runway heaped with white sand!). The idea of travelling made Tchatchoua reflect on the idea that time seems to slow when one is on an adventure and this manifested in a pattern of analog watches...there was even a wild moment of a trench coat adorned with actual watches!

For the new Issey Miyake branch IM Men (the Issey Miyake brand decided to retire their Homme Plissé runway show from the Paris schedule--although the line still continues to be produced--and replace it with the new IM Men), designers Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi looked to the 60s and 70s pottery pieces of celebrated ceramicist Shoji Kamoda for pattern and shape. The opening of the show is quite dramatic. Take a look.

Wooyoungmi showed a fun Mary Jane sandal with sheer socks and garters...

https://egonlab.com/
https://www.3paradis.com/
https://us.isseymiyake.com/
https://en.wooyoungmi.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

Pitti Uomo wrapped up yesterday and this year's guest designers included Homme Plissé Issey Miyake. It sounds like the show was a visual treat. I will let fashion journalist Luke Leitch of Vogue tell you better than I can:

"As the onset of dusk began to lower the temperature just a little in Pitti last night, the Issey Miyake sub-brand Homme Plissé took its first step on what promises to be a peripatetic voyage of inspiration.

Founded by the late Issey Miyake in 2013, the brand began showing on the Paris menswear calendar in 2019. In January this year, however, Plissé’s place in the Parisian sun was handed to the newer Miyake sub-brand (of which there seem to be many), IM Men. Which is why the Homme Plissé team touched down in Florence. Going forward, the brand will adopt a nomadic schedule of self-presentation, rambling here and there to connect with local markets and explore new forms of self-expression as it sees fit.

This collection was shown in the garden of the Villa Medicea della Petraia, a fine old house in the hills outside of the city. Before it started visitors were treated to an exhibition in the building’s covered courtyard that contextualized the collection as the result of a team research trip around Italy. The color of lemons and tomatoes, the process of painting, and the art of traveling light were all alluded to, first in the display and then second on the runway.

The mixed paint facemasks, paintbrush pockets, and outerwear pieces with integrated coathangers were all whimsical allusions back to that research process. So too were the abundant juicy shades in which some of these typically fluid Homme Plissé pieces were presented. Shown on the gravel paths of the villa’s ornamental garden, the show saw the models crunch a route way between islands of sun-parched lawn. Serendipitously, a system of sprinklers opened up mid-way into the show: this trick generated refracted rainbows in the summer air. Along the way, there seemed to be a few Medici-related renaissance allusions dropped in—deconstructed breeches, jerkins, and smocks—as well as patterns based on a creatively mixed-up palette.

The Homme Plissé models walked the finale just at the beginning of sunset, heading off towards the who-knows-where and when of this brand’s next chapter of self-expression."

https://us.isseymiyake.com/collections/hommeplisse/

BEAUTY: Clothing--IM Men

The Issey Miyake brand decided to retire their Homme Plissé runway from the Paris schedule although the line still continues to be produced. The replacement is something called IM Men (Issey Miyake Men) and their first presentation was at Paris Fashion Week for the FW '26-'26 season. While the pleats remain with the Plissé line, this new IM line demonstrates the Miyake sensibility beautifully. Garments are architectural, Asian, dramatic...many pieces were based on the idea of a square or rectangular piece of fabric and what can be created within that parameter. The resulting extra fabric flows and billows around the wearer. In fact, at the end of the show--in the video at bottom--models disassembled their ensembles into said rectangles and proceeded to run around the event space as though in flight. It is a sweet, evocative gesture that reminds me of childhood...

https://isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

While I was a big fan of Issey Miyake when he was alive (see here), the brand has gotten into a groove since 2012 when Yusuke Takahashi took over the reins (Miyake died a decade later)...albeit an interesting groove, but a groove none the less. While I like what they do, there is only so much pleated fabric one can appreciate. So for their Fall-Winter '24-'25 collection at Paris Fashion Week, they showed a wonderful collaboration--first one ever!--with French designer and artist Ronan Bouroullec who creates a daily gestural painting each morning as a way of staying in a creative zone. His calligraphic brushwork and intriguing mix of colors show up on Miayke's tops, which are then translated into 3D asymmetrical color-blocked shapes on sweaters and coats. It all feels fresh (look at the colors! like sorbet...) and alive (seeing the way brush moves on the paper and thus on the fabric is inspiring).

https://www.isseymiyake.com/pages/hommeplisse
https://www.instagram.com/ronanbouroullec

BEAUTY:Clothing--Issey Miyake SS'18

It's actually been many seasons since I have posted anything from Issey Miyake but this Spring Summer '18 collection at Paris Fashion Week really caught me.

In 2012, Yusuke Takahashi took over the men's line at Issey Miyake (Miyake founded his eponymous company in 1970). Miyake has been highly influential in clothing design and I honestly don't think we would have the likes of Rick Owens or Boris Bidjan Saberi or Damir Doma or Craig Green or even Haider Ackermann without him. I recall going to see "Bodyworks," a Miyake exhibition in 1983 at the old San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Van Ness (well before anyone had heard of Alexander McQueen much less put together a museum show about him). I knew Miyake from fashion magazines but also from costuming Grace Jones and I was blown away at the combinations of materials (neoprene, wires, bamboo, feathers, and the special Miyake-invented pleated fabric) with shapes, like he was creating shelters or buildings instead of garments. Amazing. And the main display space held an impressive collection of black mannequins, an outer ring of floating figures circling a procession of mannequins slowly ascending an invisible stairway. My 19 year-old self was beyond inspired.

Yusuke Takahashi was inspired by the heat and shifting sands of the desert for a collection aptly titled "Through The Desert." The Miyake website says, "Inspired by a journey into the desert, this collection seeks to celebrate the modern man, understanding his need to enjoy the vast beauty of the wilderness." To be more precise, it is the story of a single day in the desert, from muddy, sandy colors, to sand and blues of the sky, to a single, vibrant orange outfit representing the sunset, and back to sand and dark blue and black hues for the night sky.

Some shapes and cuts reference classic safari/desert clothing but most of the collection is a gorgeous abstraction of billowing Bedouin robes. Gorgeous patterns are based on cracked, dried mud, and cut up strips of what look like landscape photos are assembled onto fabric. "Dynamic motifs inspired by the gradations of geologic stratum are created by marble printing using colored glue. The patterns, produced by the hands of skilled craftsmen who intricately combine different colors, are roller-printed on an original, soft-textured polyester developed from proprietary thread," reports Takahashi.

I think it's quite interesting that the last two collections I've posted have been around the ideas of the desert, heat, land, like Rick Owens' Land Art seen here, and Boris Bidjan Saberi's "Mad Max: Fury Road" fantasy seen here...

I love the ambient, dark, dramatic soundtrack to the show...sounds like the soundtrack for someone trekking across the desert.

http://www.isseymiyake.com/