“It was during the development of the collection when Kondo-san and the team were all working remotely, and as part of that were all sending packages to each other, that the idea developed,” said Issey Miyake designer Satoshi Kondo’s translator, Hugh, down the Zoom. “When we cannot meet each other physically, how do we connect, how do we express our thoughts in a small and compact package?”
That idea developed into an excellent Miyake collection that was overflowing with ideas yet that could—at least as implied by the fun film that accompanied it—be folded to fit into a single drawer. Combining spatial economy with conceptual abundance, Kondo and company fashioned semi-rigid gilets and flowing, long-skirted biker jackets and matching pants that could be deconstructed by zipper. House-trademark pleated dresses and smocks and wide-gauge knits were expressed in the proprietary materials for which Miyake is rightly famed and shown not only in their colorfully expansive worn manifestations, but also unworn: Stop-motion footage showed them moving around in the manner of primeval microscopic organisms.
Especially meta were the near-the-close clothes in attractive prints depicting scenes of interior decor. Models wore these interiors attractively on their exteriors before we again received demonstration of how they could be rolled and folded away to barely anything at all. Garments act as the membrane between the body and the outside world, transmitting much. In this collection Kondo and the house of Miyake demonstrated that they can deliver a powerful message even when reduced to an apparently impossibly reduced volume.
