“Bored. Bored! Oh, my God. This is part of my life—wasted! That I will never get back! And for what?” The editor (a rather wonderful woman, not prone to hissy fits) who erupted thus was about halfway through the 20ish-minute wait outside Issey Miyake, during which we pigeonstepped through a narrow channel of steel barricades in the unseasonably beating sun, eventually making our way to four excellent but hopelessly outnumbered gentlemen who did the scanning and bag checking for a crowd of several hundred. This is worth a mention because houses should—in fact, must—start to consider the preshow experience almost as much as the show itself: For if you’re as galled as my queue companion before you see the first look, you’re hardly going to give a collection due diligence.
Once inside—the show had started 18 minutes after the next one on my review schedule (Redemption) was due to begin, and yes, I missed it—we saw a backdrop of metallic fabric that bulged to a piano backdrop as people behind obviously pressed against it. What could this represent? The amorphousness of time? The anxiety of waiting for a Miyake show? My sense of growing smugness at predicting this easily avoidable situation? I’d earlier previewed the Redemption collection in anticipation of Miyake’s lateness.
Ironically enough, it symbolized flexibility.
Miyake’s aesthetic in womenswear might be a little banal—the menswear is far sharper—but even when infuriated, you cannot fault their dedication to innovation in fabrication. Three dancers came out and contorted, stretching their raiments of a dark fabric interjected with pale angled vents that yielded with the pressure and consequently became lighter in color with the stretching. Then a proper, tall model appeared in an asymmetrical poncho of the same fabric over tricksily pleated wide black pants. The show that ensued was notable for the diversity of age in its casting and a bouncing elastic cloak/dress worn barefoot by a serene-looking model—it was printed with a bird’s-eye view of what looked to be the North Pole. We were at the top of the world looking down, in technologically advanced fabrics that reflected the mountainscapes and rust- or kelp-like colorways of Iceland, where team Miyake had been on a research trip.
It was fine. Waste less of our time in avoidable queues and you’ll get more of it in considered summation.
