Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
PARIS, France — Fluidity was the byword at Issey Miyake, in a surprisingly good collection that functioned as a reset of sorts, a blank slate or better still, a journey from a white page, as the press notes stated. It was, indeed: a supremely pure succession of roomy, essential shapes with the slightest, almost imperceptible Indian flavour to them.
After a few uncertain seasons, menswear creative director Yusuke Takahashi, probably prompted by the exhaustive Miyake retrospective held at The National Arts Center, Tokyo, went back to Miyake-san's seminal work at the beginning of his career, working with forms that are both abstract and practical, choosing materials with a tactile, natural hand that recall Japanese traditions, playing with proportions that ultimately free the movement, hence the person who wears the clothes. If the label carries on in this direction, good things might happen: Miyake's own brand of poetic pragmatism is urgently needed in the contemporary fashion wasteland.
