A new capsule collection from Pleats Please Issey Miyake celebrates three decades of the innovative Japanese label, which sees archetypal garments reimagined in the designer’s pioneering knife-edge pleated polyester.
Washable, static-resistant and entirely crease-proof – scrunch up a Pleats Please piece in a suitcase and it will emerge at its destination unwrinkled and ready to wear – the brand has come to encapsulate the late Miyake’s distinct approach, which melded colourful, exuberant design with a voracious desire for technical innovation in clothing.
The vivid 30th-anniversary pieces – comprising cropped trousers, a flared sleeveless top and a shift dress in two colourways – feature the recognisable Pleats Please logo reinterpreted as a bold, abstract print. The brand says its design is meant to appear like the various letters are ‘moving freely’ across the fabric’s surface, symbolic of the way Pleats Please’s dynamic collections are created with an emphasis on the body in movement.
Pleats Please Issey Miyake celebrates 30 years
Heat-treated pleated dresses as part of Issey Miyake Spring/Summer 1996
First launched as part of the Issey Miyake mainline collection in 1988, Pleats Please became a standalone brand in 1993. Now encompassing a vast array of pieces worn by its devoted legion of followers, the brand speaks to Miyake’s longtime maxim that ‘design is not for philosophy – it's for life’.
Such thinking continues today under the brand’s in-house team in Tokyo, which celebrates the designer’s legacy with pieces infused with feelings of joy and levity. ‘I wanted the clothes to move when people moved,’ Miyake once said. ‘The clothes are also for people to dance or laugh.’
A version of this story appears in the May 2023 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
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