The late great Issey Miyake pioneered shows that revealed not only the clothes being worn, but also how they were born—and, often through dance, the full stretch and span of their potential life. This morning his team at Homme Plissé continued the tradition at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs.
Above us, suspended from wires and stretched rigid and flat, were hung a whole slew of notably oversized garments in neutral tones and punchy pastels. Once the last damp guests had trooped in from Courrèges, three models came out and unrolled a spool of double-layered pleated rice paper from the photographers to the farthest end of the runway. Then that team emerged, in black cotton, and lined either side of the paper at regular intervals. At a percussive signal, they crouched and cut the paper through horizontally, splitting it into sections. You could see that there were garments within the two sections of paper—the same garments that were hanging from above. They peeled off the top level to reveal them as two lines of models trooped out from backstage, wearing pants or shorts. The team dressed the models in the looks they extracted from the pressed and pleated folds.
The model opposite this guest was given a pink T-shirt (pleated), a headband (pleated), and a little shoulder bag that he stretched out from his right shoulder to the crook of his right thumb. Once all the models were dressed, the team withdrew with the rice paper, and the walking began. We had just witnessed a poetic precis of the pleating technique Miyake first began exploring in 1988.
Highlights that followed included dramatically caped trenches in rich olive and orange, perfect for today’s rainy weather, christened the Wing Coat. Amongst the pressed pieces were rectangular garments cut with armholes to be worn at an angle, connected at a gradient around the shoulder: minimalist shifts. All the models wore moulded slip-on loafers. Side-zipped rompers, pants, and shifts were patterned with vaguely mid-century abstract prints. At the now customary made-for-social mass up-and-down finale the last two models bent to plie then launched into free-moving twirl, for tradition’s sake.
