Issey Miyake Men at Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2019

Mood board: The heading for Yusuke Takahashi’s elegant spring collection is ‘Sun everywhere’ – and he isn’t wrong. The S/S 2019 shows so far have been under the glare of the harsh June sun. Takahashi notes that his latest looks are designed with the precarious boundaries between work, leisure and privacy in mind. As our office calendars sync with intimate dinners and long holidays with loved ones, so our clothes blur too. The distinctions between types of dress have all but melted away. The collection proposes several variations on casual dressing – the volume of shirts are decoded into jackets or cut with jersey to form hybrid T-shirt shirts. It feels open and smart.

Best in show: The clothes are leaner than before. Less volume makes way for bolder, traditional pattern-making. The formality of corporate dressing (smart suits, neat shirts) mixes with a breezy, easy cool. Lightness always prevails at Miyake. Here it is in the zig-zag jacquard three piece suits and washable knitted outerwear in multi-coloured cotton, grey polyester and water-soluble thread. The threads dissolve after first washing to leave behind a three-dimensional texture.

Finishing touches: The ease on silhouette draws the focus to several hand-dyeing techniques. Images of shadows created by the sun are hand-done in soft fabrics in an ode to the dye-houses of Kyoto, who have been working with this technique for centuries. Pieces are woven using cotton and lyocell Ikat, dyed using the Kasuri technique. Linen shirts, blousons and track-pants are tie-dyed in monochrome.