At Wallpaper*, we champion the design-led, forward-thinking and impeccably executed. We’re always on the lookout for compelling creations – from objects and accessories to jewellery, fashion and tech – and aim to bring you pieces that subvert, surprise and delight.

In The Design Drop, we highlight the most striking objects to land that month. Think of it as a wish list for the design-discerning: browse, admire – and, if tempted, acquire.

Read on to discover April's standout pieces from our favourite brands and studios.

Paper. Pleated and compressed. Then waxed, carved, glued, sawn, deconstructed, peeled, moulded – until new expressions of form take shape, from chiselled stools and tree-like benches to ethereal lighting.

A deep exploration of the material possibilities of paper anchors a new research project by Issey Miyake, in collaboration with the Madrid-based architectural practice Ensamble Studio, and is spotlighted during Milan Design Week.

‘The Paper Log: Shell and Core’ is an exhibition at the Issey Miyake Milan flagship store, unravelling its ongoing material investigation into the textures, tones and structural potential of paper – vast volumes of which are created as a by-product of the studio’s signature pleating technology.

Delicate, sturdy, primitive, finely layered and raw, permeated with traces of soft rainbow-toned marbling: these qualities shape the prototypes presented in the exhibition, with Issey Miyake’s ‘Core’ creations (chairs, benches, tables) in dialogue with Ensamble Studio’s ‘Shell’ (deconstructed abstractions, moulded forms, lampshades).

The idea for the project was sparked when Satoshi Kondo, design director of Miyake Design Studio, spotted dense tree-like rolls of paper at one of their manufacturing sites. Sheets of paper are used to protectively sandwich Issey Miyake garments as they are inserted into pleating machines, before being compressed.

'When I first started working at Issey Miyake, this pleated paper is something I would touch almost every day,' Kondo tells Wallpaper*. 'It’s a very unique material – something that could only come from Issey Miyake and its creative process of garment pleating. I always wondered if there was anything more that we could do with it, to give it a new value that goes beyond recycling.'

The compressed paper ‘logs’ are the starting point. Measuring 80cm high with a 40cm diameter, the logs are made up of countless wafer-fine sheets with circular marbling in delicate shades of pinks, blues, greys, yellows.

'These paper logs are like a tree,' says Kondo. 'They contain time and memories – the presence of time passing and the memory of the pleating process. All these different colours are traces of the garments being fed into a pleating machine.'

Kondo’s first exploration was to cut the logs crosswise to create stools, which were used for seating in the Issey Miyake S/S 2025 show in Paris – paving the way for deeper experimentations.

A spectrum of forms, textures and shapes are displayed in the Milan exhibition. For the ‘Core’ installations by Miyake Design Studio and Issey Miyake, one key method explored was to soak the compressed rolls in wax in order to solidify the paper – resulting in sculptural material textures resembling chiselled rocks or time-etched marble, along with a more saturated colour palette.

There are stools with softly curved backrests, treated with glue; wax-soaked benches made from a clean vertical slice down the centre of a 'log', showing its raw inner beauty; and side tables carved from single compressed rolls.

A series of bricks was also created by sharply slicing wax-hardened rolls with a water-jet cutter: while an armchair shaped by bundled layers of unwaxed paper is imbued with a feathery sense of softness, its cloud-like form contained in a clean-lined metal frame.

'Sometimes it looks like wood, sometimes like rock or marble,' says Kondo. 'There is a random, unfinished beauty. It is always unplanned and surprising.'

Meanwhile, the ‘Shell’ element of the exhibition takes another approach. Keen to invite a completely fresh creative perspective on the possibilities of paper, Issey Miyake sent around 20 paper logs to Ensamble’s Madrid studio, with an invitation to freely experiment.

'In Madrid, they didn’t treat the log as solid,' says Kondo. 'They peeled the paper apart like tree bark. It became ephemeral, like a shell. They returned it to its original paper form.’

The studio embarked on a 'moulding exercise'. After deconstructing the rolls, fine paper sheets were draped over furniture, including a Le Corbusier chaise longue, before being hand-painted with hardening agents (resin and latex) in order to 'freeze' every crease, curve, fold in time and place.

The end result is a series of 'shells', translucent and light yet tangible – a 'second skin' embodying the outlines and traces of known objects, from iconic furniture pieces to an ethereal paper lampshade unfurled across the ceiling of the historic architecture at the Issey Miyake flagship.

Across this unfolding dialogue between ‘Shell’ and ‘Core – raw, primitive and never completed – the creations may be diverse in texture, atmosphere, shape and form. Yet there is a connective thread: not only through the infinite possibilities of paper, but also in the creative values that shape Issey Miyake.

'Underlying this project is the spirit of Issey Miyake – both the designer himself and the company,' says Kondo. ‘Core’ is like the human body; and ‘Shell’ is a piece of cloth. And the space between them is unfilled – or ma. The two co-exist and complement each other.'

He adds: 'This is just the starting point. It’s about treating all materials equally, not prioritising one over the other due to convention or given value – but having a fresh, new perspective. I hope people can appreciate the beauty of paper as a material as well as our original pleating process.'

Issey Miyake, Via Bagutta 12, 20121 Milano

Issey Miyake’s second collaboration with Spanish shoemaker Camper began not with the feet but with the hands: befitting the two labels’ foundation in experimentation and play, existing shoes were torn apart and then pieced back together into intriguing new forms.

‘It was through the process of piecing our findings together – as if building them like wooden blocks – that we developed the design of Karst Finch,’ Satoshi Kondo, head of Issey Miyake’s womenswear line, tells Wallpaper*. The shoe takes its name from the Karst, an original Camper shoe – a reference to the rocky geological phenomenon – while the ‘Finch’ refers to its inspiration point, the colourful plumage of the common garden bird.

Introducing Camper x Issey Miyake Karst Finch sneakers

‘During the development stage, we looked at photo books of finches and other small birds and were drawn to the richness and subtlety of their plumage and beaks,’ Kondo continues, noting that they inspired the shoe’s colour palette.

Indeed, the Karst Finch, which has a Mary Jane silhouette and playful, bubble sole, comes in a range of bold hues, including pink, yellow, green and blue, while each pair comes with two pairs of socks, in matching or contrasting tones (the effect is something like a sock-sneaker, though they can be worn without). Issey Miyake and Camper say they hope it will encourage the wearer to ‘mix, match and personalise the look’.

‘We see Camper as a company that values both craftsmanship and technology during the creation process and we feel that this attitude towards design and making resonates with [ours],’ Kondo explains of the wider collaboration, which began with a co-designed shoe for the Japanese brand’s A/W 2025 collection (a slouchy shoe and boot made from a singular piece of leather, a nod to Issey Miyake’s ‘A Piece of Cloth’ concept). The Karst Finch, meanwhile, appeared in the brand’s S/S 2026 runway show this past October.

‘We also appreciate how Camper is proactive in promoting culture by engaging with local communities through its product,’ Kondo continues. ‘We create what people wear with the same spirit – whether it’s clothing or footwear – as both companies think about design beyond the context of fashion and engage actively in collaborating with other creative disciplines.’

Camper x Issey Miyake Karst Finch sneakers are available globally from 15 April 2026.

Paris Fashion Week culminated yesterday, marking the end of a month-long season of shows that has seen previous stops in New York, London and Milan.

With a nine-day schedule standing at nearly double the length of its counterparts, Paris remains the defining city of fashion month – not least because it comprises shows from fashion’s heavyweight houses, among them Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (to name just a handful).

After last season’s debuts dominated the S/S headlines, A/W 2026 was about the sophomore show, as designers settled into their positions as creative directors. Without the weight of expectation, we saw some brilliant shows – notably Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Michael Rider at Celine, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel (all were showing their second ready-to-wear collections).

Here, reported by Wallpaper* fashion & beauty features director Jack Moss and contributing writer India Jarvis, we pick the standout shows that defined the week.

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

Jonathan Anderson staged his A/W 2026 runway show for Dior in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries, constructing a circular show set around one of the park’s ponds (for the occasion, it had been populated with Monet-esque lily pads, meticulously constructed to look like the real thing), while the invitation comprised miniature versions of the park’s signature green metal chairs. Across the pond’s centre ran an elevated runway, echoing the line of the Tuileries’ Grand Allée, a historic promenade since the park opened to the public in 1667 after a renovation by Louis XIV. It led to a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’, a contemporary imagining of the promenade, ‘[where] a walk in the park becomes a performance’. Cue a ‘panoply of Parisians’ in eclectic, time-hopping attire, from the woozy ruffles of the Belle Époque (here transformed into mini dresses with bouncing trains) to plays on bourgeois tropes, such as fabrics that recalled heritage tweeds, blazers with golden buttons, and shearling jackets reimagined with wave-like hems. What was most striking, though, was a feeling of levity: lily-pad-adorned footwear, polka-dot motifs and crystallised denim were both playful and pretty. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ Anderson said. ‘Now I feel free to release it from that.’ Jack Moss

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

A cinematic offering from Anthony Vaccarello unfolded in a simulacrum of a sleek, modernist home; at its centre, a sized-up recreation of a bust that lived in Yves Saint Laurent’s own apartment. Through it strode this season’s Saint Laurent heroine, her heavy-smoked eye and slick, side-parted hair a nod towards Helmut Newton’s Paris Vogue photograph of a model in Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo on Rue Aubriot in 1975. Indeed, tailoring was central to the A/W 2026 collection: eight trouser suits opened the show, while various other iterations appeared throughout (including Vaccarello’s own riff on the tuxedo, worn by model Loli Bahia, who walked exclusively for Saint Laurent this season and closed the show). Here, the silhouette was sloped across the shoulder and narrowed at the waist – though not constricted – for a riff on the power suit that was more ‘insouciant shrug than swagger’. As a counterpoint, Vaccarello looked towards the ‘troubled heroines’ of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, as well as Romy Schneider in the 1971 film Max et les Ferrailleurs (she was this season’s protagonist, he said), to capture an ‘elegance tinged with ennui… the beauty of intimacy and vulnerability’. To capture this mood, a series of slips and dresses came in lace coated in silicone, while enormous fur coats had a vivacious confidence. Jack Moss

Dries Van Noten

For many of us, the stylings of awkward adolescence are best not dwelt upon – after all, who looked or felt their best as a teenager? Evidently, Julian Klausner takes a more romantic view of this impressionable time, but, then again, Klausner was likely a more sophisticated brand of teenager than most. In any case, this was the impression given by his A/W 2026 collection for Dries Van Noten, which was inspired in part by a visit to Lycée Carnot, and the memories of being an adolescent ‘work-in-progress’. The Lycée is a Rive Droite public school with alumni including Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord, and Daft Punk, and its Gustave Eiffel-designed great hall has been the backdrop for numerous Paris fashion shows over the years – in other words, a suitably rarefied and creatively rich starting point.

The 61 looks at Dries Van Noten asked that most teenage question: who am I going to be today? For the confident moment, a navel-bearing button-up knit with a vibrant silk skirt. When a suit of armour is required, a protective duffel coat that does the talking for you. Or maybe one day the mood might be scholastic – collegiate blazer and pleated skirt, but always, always customised, an embellishment here, a contrasting trim there. ‘Just like a pixelated picture, the more one gets far from that time of endless questioning, the clearer it becomes,’ Klausner said, a metaphor he extended through prints with digitally warped 17th-century Flemish still life paintings. Opulent, mature fabrics and finishings were styled with a youthful irreverence best summarised by the final lines from Gala Dragot’s vocal performance, which soundtracked the show: ‘Don’t be too serious... Wear a collar... Keep it blurry though.’ India Jarvis

Acne Studios

If Dries Van Noten was an homage to the experimental attitude of youth, then Acne Studios marked its 30th birthday year with a collection that declared (as one does at 30): I know exactly who I am. A/W 2026 was an affirmation of the house’s irreverent signatures, such as a revival of the particular 1996 cut of jean that made their name, and photographic elements that nod to the brand’s unconventional marketing style, including the bi-annual Acne Paper.

The setting for this season was a succession of intersecting cuboid rooms that, viewed simultaneously from the end of the runway, appeared like a Josef Albers work made three-dimensional. According to Jonny Johansson’s show notes, this was conceived ‘like an enfilade of salons … the portals marking what has come before, and what might follow’. Where a salon in the Parisian tradition might mean a bringing together of clashing or complementary ideas, at Acne Studios, the determination is to blur those boundaries as much as possible. Standout looks saw cropped aviator jackets worn with skin-tight jodhpurs and desirable point-toe pumps, Prince of Wales check jackets worn over one shoulder, and larger-than-life portraits of art school students, taken by Paul Kooiker, printed onto stiff pencil skirts and draped dresses.

Alaïa

Late last year, just after the completion of the Italian house’s sale to Prada, it was announced that Dario Vitale would be leaving his position as creative director of Versace (he lasted a single, but impactful season), to be replaced by Belgian designer Pieter Mulier. It meant that this season’s Alaïa show, watched by designers Matthieu Blazy and Raf Simons, was to be his last: the swansong of a five-year tenure defined by commercial expansion and critical success (he has also established a coterie of model muses, many of whom walked this final show, and will likely follow him to Versace). Held in an intimate showspace in the former Fondation Cartier – Mulier said he wanted it to recall a 1990s pre-iPhone runway show – the collection itself eschewed his more recent experimental silhouettes in favour of stripping things back to the essence of the house, from simple body-contouring tank dresses to lean tailored overcoats, stretch knits, and peplums and ruffles (the last flourishes rendered in Mulier’s contemporary, streamlined style).

‘This collection is about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress?’ he said backstage after the show. ‘It’s basically a vocabulary of the last five years. It’s what I learned at Alaïa, that I’m giving to the next designer. It’s like leaving the keys on the table. At Alaïa, I learned precision, editing and [that] real luxury is not what we all think. It is a perfectly cut jacket.’ Jack Moss

READ: Pieter Mulier delivers a swansong collection at Alaïa: ‘It is a vocabulary of the last five years’

Rabanne

Of all the distinct fashions of the long 20th century, it could be argued that 1940s style is the hardest to reference without veering into the territory of costume. Perhaps it’s because boxy tailored silhouettes and victory rolls are so much associated with the vast canon of British war movies, or perhaps because austerity-driven ‘make do’ dressing is antithetical to contemporary fashion at either end of the high-low scale. It’s a testament to Julien Dossena’s eye, then, that for Rabanne A/W 2026 he incorporated patently 1940s-inspired styles – T-bar heels, tea-dress florals, and clashing knitwear – without evoking even a hint of reenactment.

After all, Rabanne has always been a house noted for its futuristic bent. Unconventional, industrial materials, like metal and plastic, are at its very heart, and remained so this season alongside those more vintage ideas – coming together in a collection that the brand called ‘a little louche’. This take on modernist femininity was told through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of a slip through an unbuttoned blouse, a hint of lace underneath a more conservative skirt, and pussybows left suggestively undone. Dossena told Wallpaper* post-show that the character he wanted to build with these contrasts was that of ‘a resistant woman’, and that for him, there was a suggestion of retro-futurism with the 1940s-derived shapes (for example, hair pulled into sculptural pompadour styles was less Vera Lynn and more replicants in Blade Runner). India Jarvis

Rick Owens

What might the cyberpunk cousin of Marlene Dietrich wear for a night on the town? It’s a question that could only be answered by Rick Owens – whose A/W 2026 collection was an homage to the ‘dignified sequence of her life stages’, all shot through with classics from his own particular design language. Think body parts augmented through prosthetics and sci-fi silhouettes in a post-apocalyptic landscape heavy with dry ice and punctuated by magnesium-bright beams of light. Presenting the collection as the second part of ‘Tower’, which premiered during the men's collections, Owens drew from Dietrich’s qualities of ‘steeliness’ and ‘grit’, and interpreted them as sheath-like dresses, abundant piles of faux fur, and flight jackets.

Just as the German star’s enduring legacy was in part a product of her striking collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, Owens is an artist quick to credit the rich input his work receives from his creative partners. This season, much attention has been lovingly devoted to name-checking the hands through which his raw materials pass – from the third-generation, family-run mill in Como, Italy, which weaves a high-performance fibre called Kevlar (purportedly five-times stronger than steel), to the Veneto-region wash house committed to reducing water waste, which treats industrial indigo canvas. India Jarvis

Loewe

Presented on a bright-yellow runway populated by German artist Cosima Von Bonin’s plush figures of clams, octopi and dogs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s sophomore Loewe collection was a welcome jolt of energy on the Friday morning of Paris Fashion Week. ‘What is fashion but an open field for endless creative play?’ said the American designers, whose poppy A/W 2026 collection translated their colourful beach-ready debut for the winter months, resulting in a riot of curvy dégradé shearling parkas, 3D-printed slips and shaggy-hemmed dresses with trailing trains. Other elements had a sporting feel – like face-shielding sunglasses, boldly coloured anoraks and chunky riffs on half-zip ski sweaters – while inflatable elements meant garments could be transformed in size and proportion (a lobster-claw-shaped pump, shown at the re-see the following day, will be sold separately).

Such experiments were made possible by the abilities of the Loewe atelier, particularly when it came to leather: bouclé overcoats were made from intricate loops of leather yarn, while the gradient shearlings were treated ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’. ‘As we began [creating] our second collection, we were struck by a simple truth: for us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ said the designers. ‘The path taken matters as much as the end result. It is the idea of play as rigorous experimentation and problem-solving, moving between instinct and experience, between a devotion to craft and its endless opportunities for innovation.’ Jack Moss

Issey Miyake

For Satoshi Kondo, the role of designer is as much about relinquishing control as it is wielding it. Knowing when to hold back, not to overstep the mark, to let the materials speak for themselves. This was the credo he brought to the fore for Issey Miyake’s A/W 2026 offering – a characteristically Japanese recognition of innate, simple beauty.

Titled ‘Creating, Allowing’, the collection navigated this specific tension understood by designers through pieces where the artist’s hand was inserted sparingly, never tampering with the true essence of the fabrication, only enhancing. At its best, this looked like expanses of cloth cut with technical lines that left their impression on the negative space, like the wine-coloured single-breasted coat with inbuilt cape that the model held up over her shoulders to exaggerate its rectangular construction. The innate movement of the house-signature pleats was used only intermittently and, instead, dramatically inflexible lacquered washi paper was introduced through breast plates, bodices and belts – creating a contrast between motion and restriction. Kondo’s intention with this was that the most important impact was made through the human frame, by ‘minimising design intervention and leaving the form-making to the wearer's own body’.

As for the space itself, the Carrousel du Louvre was transformed with a layer of silvery sand and ‘finely shredded aluminum foil, [serving] as a device for the interaction between "material", "people", and "clothing"’. This surface became marked and patterned as the models moved across it, another allusion to Kondo’s metaphor of ‘considered disruption’. India Jarvis

Lanvin

This year marks the centenary of menswear at the house of Lanvin – a celebration that filtered into the season’s womenswear outing through nods to the boyish silhouettes that characterised interwar ladies’ fashion. It was a time when overtly feminine curves were flattened into straight lines from bust to waist, creating an elongated, athletic outline that came to epitomise the emancipated New Woman.

Peter Copping, who took the reins at Lanvin in late 2024, imagined ‘a dialogue between generations’, which came together beautifully to meld the concerns of Jeanne Lanvin’s customers in the 1920s with those who shop the brand in the present. What do they have in common? Evidently, a love of opera – gloves were cuffed and elbow-length, and belted opera coats were voluminous enough to be worn over an evening gown, and trimmed with faux fur. They wear hats (Jeanne Lanvin’s first foray into fashion was as an apprentice milliner), with A/W 2026’s borrowing from cloche shapes but with exaggerated sou’wester-style brims. They favour a dash of restrained glamour. If some of the cuts leaned slightly austere, they were countered with an opulence of fabric and finish: hand-embroidered bead droplets, inky velvets, laser-cut fringes.

Lanvin is the oldest French maison still in operation, its HQ still in its original site – therefore, the weight of its legacy must hang heavily over every designer who takes its helm. Its founder insisted on le chic ultime, a phrase that surely needs no translation, and which is no small order. It is a comfort that, for every moment of reinvention it undergoes, Lanvin is still a place that women can go to for guaranteed elegance. India Jarvis

Givenchy

The idea of individual style was a throughline of Paris Fashion Week, one expressed by Sarah Burton with her third collection for Givenchy – the former Alexander McQueen designer’s most liberated outing yet (and, as a result, her best). ‘How can we put ourselves back together in the world we’re living in?’ was the question Burton asked this season, elucidating after the show that she was thinking about the multiplicities of a contemporary woman’s life (as such, it found a companion with the Prada show in Milan, where Miuccia Prada asserted that ‘as a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself’). So there was some typically brilliant tailoring (Burton is known for her prowess in the medium, and has recently brought over her tailoring team from Alexander McQueen), though also more vivid expressions of style – a dress, hanging from razor-thin straps, in bright yellow leather; shimmering leopard spots that burst into tassels; silk T-shirts that had been refashioned by Stephen Jones into headpieces – as well as oversized riffs on carpenter jeans, off-the-shoulder bombers, and high-collared white shirts. ‘I wanted to make it feel very personal,’ said Burton. ‘Each woman is her own person, each silhouette is her own character.’ Jack Moss

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe lets the clothes do the talking. The A/W 2026 collection was accompanied by show notes that came to two single sentences: ‘The Art of Assemblage Couture explores form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional notions of dressmaking. Through the direct presentation of raw materials, this approach expresses the surrounding social environment.’ This succinct summary belied a frenzy of ideas, which played out over one of the most entertaining shows of the week.

Classic couture silhouettes were fashioned from a mish-mash of consumer goods and mass-produced garments. The opening look, worn by Irina Shayk, comprised a gown in a 1950s prom style, constructed from gloves, with a mesh flounce. A puff-sleeved dress, with a squared neckline and a central slit that showed a silver interior, appeared to be made from a gold Mylar blanket – its creased folds still visible, like it had just been ripped from its packet. Another dress used kitschily patterned curtains, pinch pleats and all, for its full, trained skirt, while its bodice was made from – what else? – scrap number plates.

So far, so Watanabe, but this season offered more in the way of spectacle than just unconventional materials. In a more choreographed display than usual, Watanabe called in the services of Poland-born movement director Pat Boguslawski. He directed a languid yet melodramatic routine for Watanabe’s models, who threw garments onto chairs with tango-inspired passion, and turned their heads with the kind of simpering doe-eyed expressiveness of silent movie starlets. This reference was reinforced through Eugene Souleiman’s hair design, sculpted curls slicked to the foreheads and cheeks in the manner of Josephine Baker, and glam make-up by Isamaya Ffrench – winged, heavy-lashed and sometimes tear-streaked eyes. India Jarvis

Celine

It hasn’t taken long for Michael Rider to define a signature look at Celine: a preppy, uptown-inflected uniform that feels like a vision of Parisian style through American eyes (Rider had worked at Celine previously, under Phoebe Philo, though more recently headed up US label Polo Ralph Lauren). And it has worked: his collections thus far have felt like you could wear them off the runway and straight onto the street, full of clever riffs on quotidian pieces that will no doubt be much copied by lesser brands (they have also been full of great accessories, from abundant charm bracelets to colourful handbags and slipper-like loafers). For A/W 2026, Rider continued his upward trajectory with a show held at the Institut de France amid a series of beautiful modernist speakers in wood and metal, presenting a collection that favoured perennial style over ephemeral trends. ‘Celine is a style: a mix of old and new that feels urgent and dreamy,’ said Rider. ‘Making the things we all dream of finding and wearing.’ And in among this ready-to-wear wardrobe (in the truest sense), flourishes of the playful and the romantic emerged, from enormous sequins and flashes of animal print to feathered headpieces and bold punctuations of colour. ‘Putting on clothes, a look, can change the day – [it can] change how we walk and feel,’ said Rider. ‘I love that.’ Jack Moss

Hermès

Staged on a runway of moss and soil (strangely, a trend of the week, later seen at Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton), Nadège Vanhée’s latest outing for Hermès saw her conjure what she called a ‘liminal realm’ between dawn and dusk, earth and space. It lent the collection an alien, otherworldly feel: models emerged from glowing orbs and looped around the Garde Républicaine show space on an inky runway, which also inspired the clothing’s palette of deep blues, greys and black. Mashing up the equestrian codes that remain at the heart of Hermès – here, sliced-away jodhpurs-cum-cycling shorts, dressage blazers and knee-high leather boots – with lean, futuristic silhouettes, it was a clever hybrid of the past, present and future, a liminal realm of Vanhée’s own. Ostrich and leather jump suits, with contrasting knit sleeves, were the season’s show pieces – the result of the house’s superlative leather atelier, they straddled sex appeal and function – while visible zips added an almost sci-fi feel, running down the front of dresses or slicing across the chest of a jacket. Prints came via AM Cassandre, an art deco artist, and saw clouds intersected by a geometric structure – a reflection of Vanhée’s own juxtapositions between the graphic and the elemental. Jack Moss

Comme des Garçons

A strong Comme des Garçons collection saw Rei Kawakubo find solace in her favoured colour, black, which – save for a brief interlude in bright, candy pink – made up the majority of the A/W 2026 collection. And, while recent collections have seen Kawakubo grapple with tumultuous world affairs, the choice of the colour was not necessarily to represent grief or mourning – instead, the Japanese designer said it captured the expansiveness of the creative process. ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ she said in a typically brief statement issued to the press. ‘It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the universe and the black hole.’ Indeed, the use of a single colour allowed Kawakubo’s typically provocative forms to come to the fore: this season, pillow-like constructions draped in semi-sheer black tulle, undulating pile-ups of shirred ruffles and tassels, or saucer-shaped protusions that looped around the upper body. Like any Comme collection, it was a Rorschach test – revelling in the unfamiliar, Kawakubo always challenges you to draw your own conclusions. Jack Moss

Balenciaga

Of all the creative directors at the nascent stages of new tenures, Pierpaolo Piccioli might have one of the steepest mountains to climb at Balenciaga. In the 16 years he spent at Valentino, prior to taking this new position in the spring of 2025, he demonstrated a Cristóbal Balenciaga-worthy approach to dressmaking that prioritised proportion and colour. But while Piccioli was sending out breathtaking confections of ballooning silk taffeta at Valentino, Balenciaga the brand was being injected with a new edge, at the hand of Vetements-founder Demna, whose zeitgeist-defining designs were laced with subversion and irony. How to bring the grandeur and romance that are Piccioli’s calling cards, without alienating the new demographic of customers who flocked to the brand under Demna?

For this season, his second collection, Piccioli pinned his hopes on a collaboration with Sam Levinson – the creator of Euphoria, the teen drama responsible for making internationally recognised stars out of its cast, which includes Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer. Audiences at the Balenciaga A/W 2026 show were treated to a preview of clips from the HBO show’s third series (airing publicly in April), which played on screens across the venue; its interplay of light and dark was found running through the collection, which Piccioli had titled ‘ClairObscur’. The collection itself was a largely black affair, in light-catching high-gloss fabrics, punctuated by the occasional neon-toned print that harkened to Euphoria's colour-saturated visual style. If Euphoria – boundary-pushing, youth-orientated, and ever so slightly contentious – feels more spiritually within Demna’s wheelhouse than Piccioli’s, the High Renaissance references (‘ClairObscur’ is a play on clair-obscur or chiaroscuro, the artistic style beloved by Mannerist painters, which manifests as dramatically contrasting tones to create intense depth) brought proceedings firmly back into Piccioli’s world. India Jarvis

READ: Balenciaga taps Euphoria’s Sam Levinson for A/W 2026

Jean Paul Gaultier

After the shock factor of his debut last season – one which divided both critics and online commentators with its barely-there silhouettes and trompe l’oeil prints of nude bodies – Dutch designer Duran Lantink seemed to hit his stride this season, using his eye for the surreal and the sculptural to create a disruptive cast of archetypes, from the raver to the cowboy. Marlene Dietrich (or, more specifically, a treasured mesh T-shirt printed with the filmstar that Lantink had found in a vintage shop) was one figure on the moodboard, inspiring the clever opening tailoring, which came with jutting folds and sculpted lapels, while also being printed on a dress installed with dry ice (a nod to her favoured vice – cigarettes). The designer said she was a master in subverting tropes: ‘dominant, sexy and graceful, the ultimate hybrid’ – a mood that informed the shape-shifting collection. Tailoring metamorphosed into tech-y sportswear, trompe-l’oeil bodysuits of artist’s dummies were overlaid with lingerie, and puffer jackets became bodysuits. ‘It’s a spirit that suits the house of Gaultier, a place where the world is perpetually turned upside down,’ said Lantink via press notes. ‘Feminine and masculine, inside out, vintage and new, underwear as outerwear, technical and tailored all at once.’ Jack Moss

Chanel

Matthieu Blazy said that his sophomore ready-to-wear collection began with a quote from house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. ‘Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.’ It seemed an apt description for Blazy’s own vision for Chanel thus far, one which elevates the quotidien through expressive acts of craft, and finds joy in both the functional and the glamorous. These are special clothes, no doubt (as anyone who has had the chance to see them up close can attest), though they are designed to be worn, not simply exalted. As such, he will no doubt be satisfied by the busy shop floors earlier this week as his debut collection landed (it was an ongoing fashion-week talking point), and more so to see those purchases worn by attendees to the show on Monday evening (and not just by the usual high-spending customers, but editors and stylists alike).

Staged amid a series of vast primary-coloured cranes – Blazy is, after all, still in the process of constructing his Chanel – the designer’s A/W 2026 collection was a brilliant and comprehensive exercise in wardrobing, which, to borrow Coco Chanel’s categorisation spanned the ‘caterpillar’ (roomy blazers, tweeds reformulated into lumberjack-style overshirts, simple jersey dresses), but also the ‘butterfly’. The latter came in an extraordinary stream of lustrous, colour-sturated looks at the end of the show, loaded with embellishment – appliqué flowers, lace and beads – and matched with models’ pastel-coloured or metallic hair. Over the 78 looks, there was a multitude of iterations of the Chanel woman, and the accessories to match (from gleaming metallic court shorts, to squashy crescent-shaped bags that recalled croissants). ‘Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ said Blazy. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’ Jack Moss

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière staged his A/W 2026 collection for Louis Vuitton amid a show set by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, seeing rolling green hills – like those found in pastoral landscapes – abstracted into a series of sharp, futuristic peaks. The collection itself had a similar rationale, drawing inspiration from nature – ‘mountains, forests, plains’, and the clothing traditionally used to live among such elemental landscapes – and reimagining them through a series of Ghesquière’s typically idiosyncratic, time-travelling silhouettes. The idea of expedition seemed a throughline – supersized-wide-shouldered jackets, shearling hats and furry-hooded duffel coats seemed primed for protection, while bags hung on leather staffs like bindles – though there was a ceremonial feel to garments, which recalled traditional rural dress (though, in Ghesquière style, they were mashed up in such a way that the references were hard to place). ‘It is not an escape from our realities, but an echo of them,’ said Ghesquière of the vivid collection, which also featured the ‘urban pastoral’ works of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. ‘[It is] a new folklore, for the future.’ Jack Moss

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada has long interrogated a woman’s place in the world: how they move through it, and a wardrobe that feels reflective of their needs. For A/W 2026, she was thinking about the ‘smallness of the body’ – not in its physical proportions, but in opposition with the vastness of the world around us. It feels like a response to our current era of overload: the runway at Palais d’Iéna was covered in a layer of soil and moss, a reminder that beyond the pomp and ceremony of luxury fashion, we are simply humans living in communion with the earth (as a seatmate commented, perhaps this was her instruction to ‘touch grass’). ‘I am obsessed with the smallness of the body – in a human sense, the contrast between ourselves, our bodies and the vastness of that which surrounds us,’ she said. ‘Who we are, and the scale and magnitude of what we have to face. This collection is not about fragility – there is a confidence, and a strength. But always about a confrontation between a human and the expansiveness of the world.’

As such, the collection segued between moments of strength and intimacy: for the former, enveloping trapper hats, hiking shoes and sporty shearling-lined parkas, for the latter, slip dresses, satin shoes and bejewelled embellishment. There felt something of the 1990s to it: not only in the more minimal looks, which intersected the middle of the show, but in that contrast between glamour and utility (a parka over a mini dress; a studded handbag; a block heel), and also the appearance of Chloë Sevigny, a longtime house muse who first walked for Miu Miu in 1996. She was joined by a coterie of ‘individuals’ on the runway, from models Gemma Ward and Kristen McMenamy to the actress Gillian Anderson, who closed the show. Jack Moss

READ: Miu Miu’s all-star cast for A/W 2026 featured Gillian Anderson and Chloë Sevigny

Optimism, colour and a sense of play are the order of the day as this season’s 12 standout looks and accessories spark a fresh start. As taken from the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, we unpack S/S 2026’s defining trends.

Bold Texture

Above left.

For her Bottega Veneta debut, Louise Trotter channelled a feeling of ‘liberation’ through an expressive use of colour and texture, including a series of pieces constructed from strands of iridescent recycled fibreglass. In their dynamism, she sought to reflect the vibrant life of Laura Braggion, Bottega Veneta’s design director from 1985-2001, who was a member of Andy Warhol’s Factory before her time at the house.

Lucky charms

Above right.

The charm bracelet is an item of jewellery long said to bring luck andprotection. This season, the auspicious accessory enjoys a renaissance, thanks to Michael Rider at Celine: the designer’s debut ready-to-wear collection featured bracelets heavy with charms, from the house’s Triomphe monogram to heart-shaped padlocks, lockets and a helping hand, the latter a longtime symbol of prosperity and safety.

The 1990s slip

The 1990s’ mythic cool continues to be an influence on contemporary fashion (and looks set to carry on with the launch of Tate Britain’s blockbuster exhibition ‘The 90s’ in October). Few garments are more synonymous with the era than the slip dress, which had a rebirth on the runway this season, appearing at Victoria Beckham, Tom Ford and Wooyoungmi, where this negligee came edged in delicate fronds of lace.

A brand new bag

‘A study in intimacy’ is how Sarah Burton describes her first major bag launch for Givenchy. Titled the ‘Snatch’, its gently curved shape, which hooks over the shoulder and hugs neatly under the arm, is designed to echo Burton’s ready-to-wear, whether the cinched waist of a blazer or the curve of a bra top. The softness of the leather is an echo of this feeling of intimacy: ‘it pulls, cinches and embraces,’ she says.

Pyjama dressing

There is an undone elegance to the pyjama shirt, which appeared in various iterations this season – at Dries Van Noten, Dunhill and Dolce & Gabbana, among others. This striped offering, from Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, is part of a collection of ‘ease and escapism’, in which Vaccarello sought to capture the inertia of a summer afternoon. ‘Everything feels light; shapes float rather than cling,’ he says.

Block colour

At Ferragamo, Maximilian Davis took inspiration from the dress codes of the 1920s, injecting modernity via vivid accessories – feathers sprouted from bags while mules came in luminous hues – and colour-blocked garments, like this graphic silk-panelled dress. Indeed, colour blocking was a throughline of the wider S/S 2026 season – collections from Celine, Jil Sander and Loewe all featured the expressive motif.

True blue

Blue provided a feeling of undeniable uplift this season, with the breezy hue colouring the runway at IM Men (part of a collection inspired by the work of ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda), Fendi, Tom Ford and Dolce & Gabbana. Over at Lanvin, Peter Copping paid homage to house founder Jeanne Lanvin’s love of the colour – a fascination that began with the vivid blue skies of Fra Angelico’s 15th-century frescoes.

A new summer shoe

Former Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez looked to artist Ellsworth Kelly for their debut collection for Loewe, channelling his ‘elemental colours’ and ‘chromatic intensity’ in a collection that sought a feeling of freedom and release. Sculpted leather dresses, flocked heels and vivid striped knits had a playful sensibility, injecting new energy into the Spanish house.

Extreme layering

Zane Li’s debut show for his eponymous New York label LII made a case for extreme layering, a playful theme that ran throughout the S/S 2026 season. At Issey Miyake, diaphanous layers of fabric were stretched over household objects to create surreal silhouettes, while rising Belgian designer Julie Kegels turned garments upside down and collaged them together, as if they had taken on a life of their own.

Shirt tales

Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection for Chanel featured a collaboration with Parisian shirtmaker Charvet. The designer drew inspiration from Coco Chanel’s love affair with polo player Boy Capel and the way she would purportedly share his clothing. Embroidered with ‘Chanel’ and crafted with a weighted hem, the poplin shirts capture Blazy’s knack for elevating the quotidian through meticulous acts of craft.

Standout specs

Sunglasses are for making a sartorial statement this season. Case in point: these goggle-like frames from Miu Miu, which appeared on the S/S 2026 runway in bright shades of yellow, orange and blue. Similar styles were seen at Loewe, Versace and Balenciaga, the latter presenting huge bug-eyed shades adorned with shimmering crystals and worn with gowns and opera gloves – a very modern proposition for eveningwear.

Vivid outerwear

Outerwear eschewed the usual hues of grey, brown and black for bold colours that befit spring. This red overcoat by Prada embodies the season’s optimism, appearing as part of a collection that was about capturing a mood of escapism. Colourful outerwear was also spotted at Auralee, Dries Van Noten and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, the latter inspired by hazy summer days on New York’s Fire Island.

Shop the story

A version of this story appears in the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + now. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Pascal Thulin at Next, Marrit Krikke at Platform Agency. Casting: Leila at Suun Consultancy. Hair: Paula McCash using Babylisspro and Evopro. Make-up: Claire Urquhart at Julian Watson Agency using Make Up For Ever. Manicure: Saffron Goddard using Chanel La Base Camélia and La Crème Main. Digi tech: Cameron Williamson. Photography assistant: Lucas Bullens. Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Danielle Quigley.

We might just be a week into the new year, but Issey Miyake’s recently announced collaboration with fellow Japanese brand – and sportswear behemoth – Asics is making an early claim for the standout sneaker of 2026.

As one would expect for Issey Miyake – a fashion label as well known for its bold aesthetic statements as it is for the innovative processes used to create the otherworldly garments – this is no throwaway collaboration, but instead the culmination of a months-long process of experimentation, testing and play.

With a satisfying simplicity, the broader project is titled ‘Issey Miyake Foot’, an ongoing collaboration with Asics which is expected to spawn several more footwear launches over the coming year (and perhaps beyond, though the specifics of the partnership have yet to be revealed).

As the name suggests, at the heart of the project is a ‘study of the foot... to develop footwear that brings new perspectives and proposals to everyday life’, as Issey Miyake describes. A collaboration between the MDS (Miyake Design Studio) and Asics’ development team, the prototypes were rigorously tested at the Asics Institute of Sport Science in Nishi-Ku, a ward of Kobe, Japan.

The first launch from the project – which arrives in selected stores later this month – is called Issey Miyake Foot ‘Hyper Taping’. Originally revealed as part of the IM Men show in Paris this past June, the sleek, low-profile sneaker draws inspiration from the colourful taping worn by athletes to prevent injury.

Conceived to ‘tape’ the foot in a similar manner, the sneaker features wraparound velcro fastening – the idea is to stabilise the foot – while the slim outsole is derived from those used for wrestling shoes. Meanwhile, a new last has been created for the shoe, one which prioritises comfort and is fine-tuned to the natural contours of the foot.

Which all makes it an apt purchase for the fitness pursuits typical of the new year, whether you are making an attempt to increase your daily steps or hitting the gym floor. Physical activity is not a prerequisite, though: we simply enjoy the bold hues typical of Issey Miyake, from vivid shades of yellow and blue to a steely silver grey.

Issey Miyake Foot ‘Hyper Taping’ is available in selected stores later this month.

isseymiyake.com

This has been a watershed year in fashion. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, 2025 saw the industry hit refresh: in September alone, 15 designers made their debuts as creative directors of fashion’s major houses, ushering in a bold new era in style (and, as with any such change, prompting passionate – and oftentimes divided – online commentary).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are the 25 fashion moments that defined the zeitgeist in 2025 – from a viral Marty Supreme track jacket and Saint Laurent’s thigh-high wader boots, to big-name buyouts, runway returns and, of course, all those debuts.

Willy Chavarria made his mark in Paris with a powerful duo of shows

In January, CFDA Award-winning designer Willy Chavarria chose to shift his runway show from New York, where he lives and works, to Paris. A striking first show, held at the American Church on Quai d’Orsay, came just a few days after Trump’s inauguration, with Chavarria – whose runway shows have long been a clarion call for the rights of immigrants and the queer community – soundtracking the show with Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon imploring the incoming president to ‘have mercy’ towards marginalised communities. ‘It was so beautiful, and it fell exactly in line with what we were doing,’ he told Wallpaper* of the speech. ‘I wanted to show that everyone is welcome, and to do that in a church seemed like the most pronounced way of showing queer people, trans people, in this environment where they were the saints’. His sophomore Paris show, this summer, was similarly impactful: it opened with 35 kneeling men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a reference to those being unlawfully detained by ICE in the United States.

READ: Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion’s old guard’

Faux fur and shearling took over the runway

Not a moment, per se, though the proliferation of faux fur and shearling on the runway – spanning both the men’s and women’s collections – was one of the year’s undeniable style takeaways (so much so, we even spotted it on the spring/summer runways). ‘When worn, it becomes a heady meeting place of signifiers – luxury, wealth, power, but also protection, armour against the elements, an ancient and primal urge to be swaddled in the spoils of the hunt,’ we wrote earlier this year of the renaissance of fur – albeit in imitation fabrics – which seemed to a response to the tumult of contemporary living. Indeed, at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘Raw Glamour’, ‘fur’ coats – constructed from cleverly manipulated shearling – had strange protusions at the collar or were trapped under plastic. ‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

READ: Faux fur and shearling dominated the A/W 2025 runways – these pieces capture the material’s ‘raw glamour’

Alessandro Michele entertained with a showstopping haute couture debut for Valentino

Haute couture was always going to be a medium which suited Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director who now heads up Valentino. For his first couture collection for the house – presented this past February – the Italian designer, known for theatrical runway shows and richly imaginative collections, hit new heights, employing the ‘petits mains’ of the Valentino atelier to create a series of showstopping gowns. In a style typical to the deep-thinking designer, they were explained in the book-length collection notes through the language of philosophy and semiotics – Homer, James Joyce and Italo Calvino were all mentioned – with each gown representing a ‘list’ of words and influences (‘[lists] confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe,’ Michele wrote, quoting Umberto Eco). These surreal lists scrolled across the show’s set on a series of ticker-tape screens as the dramatic looks wandered across the stage, a millefeuille of satin, lace and tulle – eclectic, intricate and, as fashion sleuths showed after the show, rooted in the Valentino archive. ‘To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own,’ we wrote at the time. ‘It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.’

READ: Inside Alessandro Michele’s showstopping debut haute couture show for Valentino

Martine Rose held her first gallery show – an ode to Bronski Beat’s radical energy

During London Fashion Week in February, Martine Rose hosted her first gallery show at Sadie Coles HQ, revisiting her 2016 film Everything Must Change – a Sharna Osbourne-shot short starring Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville. ‘Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond,’ Rose told Wallpaper*. ‘Mainstream pop by out and proud gay men making serious, respected pop music – not tokenistic – which can never be replicated. It was a radical time for music, all about individuality, no stylists, all genuine expression.’ It’s a statement that captures the radical, subculture-infused energy of Rose’s own work: later that year, in June, she staged a one-off show in an abandoned west London job centre, adorned for the occasion in boudoir-style ruffled curtains. ‘I was exploring this new shrunken silhouette,’ she said after the show. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.’ It is this idiosyncratic approach – at once strange, sexy and real – which has made Martine Rose one of London’s defining voices, doing things her own way for close to two decades.

READ: Martine Rose’s first gallery show celebrates the radical queer energy of Bronski Beat

Calvin Klein returned to the runway with a new ‘sexitude’

In February, Calvin Klein hosted its first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018 (under him, the runway collections went under the moniker Calvin Klein 205W39NYC; now, they are back to being called Calvin Klein Collection). In one of the year’s first notable debuts, it was former The Row designer Veronica Leoni who took the helm, seeking a mood of sensual minimalism she dubbed ‘sexitude’ – a nod to the pulsing undercurrent of eroticism which ran through the brand’s advertising campaigns and collections in the 1990s. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ the Italian designer said backstage. ‘You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’ The collection came with the blessing of Mr Klein himself, who watched on from the front row. ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Fendi celebrated its centenary with a blockbuster show in Milan

2025 was a definitive year for Fendi: not only did it mark a century since the fashion house was founded in Rome, but, after the departure of artistic director of womenswear and couture Kim Jones in October 2024, the beginning of its new chapter. As such, in February, Fendi opened the doors to its newly renovated Milanese headquarters for a celebratory runway show, seeing house scion Silvia Venturini Fendi take the reins for the blockbuster spectacle which included a cast of Fendi muses, past and present. The granddaughter of house founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, Venturini Fendi started at the house in the 1990s under Karl Lagerfeld, and would go on to head up menswear and accessories, though this was just the second time she had also designed the womenswear line (the first was after Lagerfeld’s death in 2019). Talking to Wallpaper*, she said that it was an honour to head up such a definitive show for both her family and the house – but was adamant this was not about living in the past: ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’. After presenting a second co-ed collecti on in September, she stepped down from the creative role to become ‘honorary president’. Her successor will be former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in a much-rumoured move.

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

Prada agreed to purchase Versace for $1.375 billion

The subject of much speculation and rumour after Donatella Versace stepped down from her role as creative director the month prior, in April, it was confirmed that the Prada Group reached an agreement to purchase Versace after the Italian house was put on sale by former owner Capri Holdings earlier in the year. Agreeing to a deal of $1.375 billion for 100 per cent of the company – well below the initial $2 billion asking price – it marked a definitive move from the Prada Group to establish an Italian luxury conglomerate (The Prada Group comprises Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe; in 1999, it purchased controlling stakes in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, though they were later sold). ‘We are delighted to welcome Versace to the Prada Group and to build a new chapter for a brand with which we share a strong commitment to creativity, craftmanship and heritage,’ said Patrizio Bertelli, Prada Group chairman and executive director, at the time (the deal was completed in December). ‘We aim to continue Versace’s legacy, celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic; at the same time, we will provide it with a strong platform.’

READ: Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director

The Met’s Costume Institute explored the figure of the Black Dandy

In a year which was notable for its slew of fashion exhibitions – from the confection-like gowns of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at London’s V&A to a Rick Owens retrospective featuring a lifelike sculpture of the designer ‘urinating’ water into a trough below – the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition in May still demands the most attention. This is largely because of the accompanying Met Gala – the starry event heralds the exhibition’s opening – though it is also down to the Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton’s eye for finding intriguing subject matter in the Met’s extensive archive. This year, he drafted Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, to help curate the exhibition, which traced the sartorial history of the Black Dandy from the 18th century to the present day. Titled ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, alongside historical garments, it featured the work – or personal wardrobes – of Virgil Abloh, Andre Leon Talley and Grace Wales Bonner, among others, with set design for the arresting exhibition courtesy of artist Torkwase Dyson. ‘I clocked into how people have fashioned themselves as a manipulation of autonomy and ownership in which clothing is a resistance,’ she told Wallpaper* of the design, which riffed on her signature trapezoid sculptures.

READ: Torkwase Dyson’s set design for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at The Met meditates on ownership, charisma and histories

Saint Laurent’s viral knee-high boots heralded menswear’s dark, sensual mood

At Cannes film festival, while promoting queer ‘dom-com’ Pillion – a film which explores a dom/sub relationship between a shy parking attendant and a biker – Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård donned a thigh-high leather wader boot by Anthony Vaccarrello for Saint Laurent. Shown at the house’s runway show earlier that year, it became one of the viral accessories of the year, worn by everyone from Pedro Pascal to Marc Jacobs, and ubiquitous in magazine spreads. Inspired by an imagined meeting between two men who designed the aesthetic of the 1980s – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe – the collection captured a mood of dangerous sensuality which ran throughout the season, from Prada’s patchworked leathers to Maximilian Davis’s S/S 2026 Ferragamo collection, inspired by the languid sensuality of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Vaccarello dubbed it a ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ – classic menswear with an inflection of kink.

READ: Inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint Laurent’s surprise menswear show captured ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake channelled la dolce vita in Florence

It would prove one of the most memorable show locations of the year: unfolding against a painterly Florentine sky at sunset, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged its S/S 2026 show at Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello in the rolling Tuscan countryside. A guest of Pitti Uomo menswear fair, the Issey Miyake offshoot used the occasion to introduce a new roving format of runway show: eschewing its usual place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (its position has been taken by IM Men, another brand in the Issey Miyake family), it will show in a series of locations around the world in the coming seasons. As such, collections will draw inspiration from local landscapes: here, it was done via an evocative use of colour, utilising hues sourced through trips the design team had taken around Italy (from ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ to ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’). The result was a collection which fused Italian charm with Homme Plissé’s pioneering fabrications: played out in the villa’s winding, maze-like gardens, it was impossible not to be seduced.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Rick Owens spread the love with a Paris retrospective

‘I’m surprised I got so far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Palais Galliera. A celebration of the American designer’s singular approach – one laced with both subversion and wit – the exhibition took attendees on a trip from his early years on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s (a recreation of his Los Angeles bedroom of the time appears in the exhibition) towards his blockbuster spectacles at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (indeed, in June, an opening party took place just after his S/S 2026 menswear show, with guests simply having to cross the road from one institution to another). ‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, ‘You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!’ She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it,’ he said. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

READ: ‘I’m surprised that I got this far’: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Jonathan Anderson rebooted his brand – and debuted at Dior

It was a busy June for Jonathan Anderson. Alongside his much-anticipated debut show at Dior – a menswear offering for S/S 2026 presented at Paris’ Hôtel National des Invalides, which astutely reworked formal dress codes – the Northern Irish designer also revealed a rebooted vision for his eponymous, London-based label JW Anderson, which propelled him to renown after it was established in 2008. Doing away with the label’s usual seasonal runway shows, the new vision centres on the idea of the shop: in Paris, during haute couture week, he constructed a simulacrum of a new store concept by architects Sanchez Benton which included not only a fashion collection (a greatest hits of sorts, seeing signature pieces imbued with a greater commitment to craft) but a curation of intriguing objects and curiosities, from ceramics and vintage gardening tools to furniture, art, even honey. 'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with.’

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut: ‘bringing joy to the art of dressing’

Craig Green returned to the runway – and to Paris

After just over a decade in business, Craig Green remains one of British fashion’s definitive voices – a singular creative force whose imaginative collections transform humble menswear archetypes (workwear, uniforms, biker jackets) through imaginative construction and unusual fabrications, oftentimes evoking sculpture. This year, he made his return to Paris Fashion Week, having shown a year prior in his London studio, and elsewhere via lookbook (Green is one of a handful of designers who seem to be flourishing outside of the typical fashion calendar). The show was one of our highlights of the year: a poetic, free-thinking collection inspired by The Beatles, psychedelics and 1960s bed sheets – albeit in his typically inventive style. ‘Creativity how everything moves forward,’ Green told us in the October 2025 ‘Long View’ issue of Wallpaper*, in which we documented the process behind the collection. ‘You need creative thought for things to progress, and for new things to happen. You have to have the freedom to make mistakes, to create work and not live in fear.’

READ: ‘You have to be fearless’: inside the free-thinking world of Craig Green

Glenn Martens unveiled his vision for Maison Margiela

The task was unenviable: as the new creative director of Maison Margiela, Belgian designer Glenn Martens would not only have to follow the house’s namesake – arguably the most influential designer of recent times – but also John Galliano, his predecessor, whose final collection, which conjured a troupe of contorted dolls on the drizzly moonlit banks of the Seine, was a true fashion epic. But Martens, who comes with a pedigree of his own after zeitgeist-defining stints at Y/Project and Diesel, was more than up for a challenge. His own creatures were sheathed in masks (a nod to a Margiela hallmark, that of anonymity) and appeared pulled through the the walls of history – quite literally, with a melange of jacquards, Renaissance motifs and embossed leather (inspired by 16th-century Flemish wallpaper), evoking the faded grandeur of abandoned stately homes (indeed, the show set was a series of ‘palatial interiors’ printed on crumpled and crased paper). We called it a ‘thrilling’ debut, a task of ‘reinvention and reconstruction – a precarious balance of what to take and what to leave behind’.

READ: Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future

Fashion East celebrated a ‘rowdy and raw’ 25 years of nurturing emerging talent

In September, Fashion East’s S/S 2026 runway show doubled as a celebration: 2025 marked 25 years of the Brick Lane-based talent incubator, which was founded by Lulu Kennedy to help forge the careers of London’s rising stars. The roll call of names which have passed through its doors is proof of its success: Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Kim Jones, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner are all alumni of the unique scheme, which has long encapsulated London’s unique brand of young talent – defiantly creative, ‘rowdy and raw’ (as Kennedy herself described in a letter distributed to guests at the show). Taking place at the ICA, this season’s show – comprising collections by Nuba, Jacek Gleba and Mayhew – doubled as a Nike-sponsored exhibition tracing Fashion East’s impressive quarter century through its memorable clothing and ephemera, from Green’s ‘broken-fence’ chestplates to a leopard-print cake by Mowalola. Later in the year, in December, Kennedy and her creative partner Raphaelle Moore collected a Special Recognition Award at the 2025 Fashion Awards. ‘We’re proud to have created a unique space where designers have both the freedom to create fearlessly, and a family unit to uplift them,’ they said.

September’s fashion week saw almost too many debuts to count

2025 was fashion’s big reshuffle, seeing an unprecedented number of designers making their debuts at fashion’s biggest houses – from Dior to Chanel, Gucci to Celine. It was September fashion month, though, that was a true changing of the guard moment, with over 15 designers presenting their first collections as newly installed creative leads. These spanned an energetic and playful debut from Nicholas Aburn at Area in New York (the former Balenciaga designer riffed on the figure of the party girl in irreverent style), Simone Bellotti’s masterful first outing at Jil Sander, which saw him astutely explore ideas of modernity and lightness (staged in the brand’s white-walled Milan headquarters, it was a true clean slate momet), or Pierpaolo Piccioli’s typically heartfelt first collection for Balenciaga (an appearance from the Duchess of Sussex ensured column inches).

Elsewhere, notable debuts included Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier. And, while these debuts were largely lauded – particularly by critics – fiercer debates broke out online in the depths of Instagram comment sections. ‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ wrote Perfect magazine’s Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta, in a much-shared post. ‘It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything… but why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Though in Paris, it was Chanel and Dior which commanded the most attention

There were two debuts, though, which commanded the most attention: Jonathan Anderson’s womenswear debut for Dior (he had previously shown his first menswear collection in June) and Matthieu Blazy’s opening act for Chanel. Shrugging off the weight of expectation, both collections provided an astute and contemporary viewpoint on the future of two of fashion’s most storied houses – Anderson through a fearless ‘recoding’ of the house’s archive in his idosyncratic style (we said it was a collection of ‘bravery, vision and instinct’), Blazy through a collection of unbridled freedom and optimism (a twirling Awar Odhiang in a gown of kaleidoscopic feathers, the model who memorably closed the show, encapsulated the ‘triumphant’ mood). After Chanel, which marked the end of fashion month, we said that after all of the debuts, it finally felt like a ‘weight had been lifted’. ‘There will be no more anticipation or speculation, no more guessing games or gossip. The designers are in place, and a new chapter of fashion has begun – from there, the hard work begins.’

While Demna marked his Gucci debut with a Demi Moore-starring film

In what proved an astute move, the Georgian designer Demna – previously of Balenciaga – got ahead of the season’s other debuts by presenting his first collection as creative director of Gucci on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, allowing him a moment in which he dominated the narrative (and, of course, social media). Revealed first through a lookbook of Gucci ‘archetypes’, rewritten in his typically irreverent and subversive style (he called it a ‘bold, sexy new chapter’ for the house), it was followed up by a Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-directed short, premiered at Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte. Titled The Tiger, it starred Demi Moore as the fictional ’head of Gucci international and chairman of California’ whose world begins to unravel at a family gathering. Even cleverer? Demna will get another ‘debut’ in 2026 when he holds his first runway for the house during Milan Fashion Week, in February.

READ: Gucci reveals its ‘bold, unapologetically sexy’ new era under Demna

The fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani

In early September, the fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani, an arbiter of Italian style who founded his eponymous house half a century ago, in 1975. One of fashion’s great success stories, Mr Armani began the label using funds made from selling his old Volkswagen Beetle; on his death, he left behind a multi-billion dollar empire spanning not only fashion but homeware, hotels, restaurants, fragrances and cosmetics. To mark his death, after a private funeral held earlier in the month, well-wishers gathered at Milan Fashion Week in September for his final Giorgio Armani show. Originally intended to celebrate 50 years in business, it took place at Brera’s Pinacoteca di Brera, where an accompanying exhibition unfolded in the galleries above. As ever, the S/S 2026 collection – modelled on a cast of Armani models past and present and watched on by muses Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton and Cate Blanchett – encapsulated Mr Armani’s brand of soft elegance, culminating with model Agnes Zogla in a glimmering gown adorned with his face. Afterwards, guests milled the galleries, where the designer’s work took its fitting place amid the great Italian masters – from Bellini to Raphael.

READ: In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

A Virgil Abloh exhibition celebrated his landmark legacy

Just over four years since his death, American designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a towering legacy – one which was celebrated this September in Paris with the opening of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. Open for just a few days (cue a sold out booking system and snaking queues around the block), the exhibition opened the doors to his prolific archive of objects, clothing, ephemera, furniture and art, displayed across sprawling tables and shelves as if stepping into his headquarters. Indeed, one senses the polymathic designer – who made history as the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton – would enjoy the exhibition’s approach, which eshewed the behind-glass formality of the traditional museum (only self-restraint stopped you from picking up the objects on display). Titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, the idea is for it to go on display around the world. ‘This is a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos,’ said the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

READ: Inside the Paris exhibition cataloguing Virgil Abloh’s extraordinary archive

Grace Wales Bonner is appointed at Hermès

In late October, Hermès announced the appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as the house’s head of menswear, replacing Véronique Nichanian who made the choice to step down from the role after a record-breaking 37-year tenure (the longest of any working creative director at a fashion house). It felt long overdue for the British designer. An LVMH Prize-winning designer whose deeply felt collections for her eponymous label Wales Bonner – exploring themes of Black masculinity, migration and luxury – have consistently won plaudits for rich storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship, leading many to question why she hadn’t been chosen for a creative director role sooner (she had been rumoured for roles at both Louis Vuitton and Givenchy which went to Pharrell Williams and Sarah Burton respectively). On social media, there was a rare positive consensus on the decision: in her own post, the designer, who was born in South London to a British mother and Jamaican father, expressed her ‘deep honour’ at being chosen for the role. ‘It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,’ she wrote.

READ: Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at Hermès

1980s ‘architect of glamour’ Antony Price returned to the runway

The fashion critic Alexander Fury – who is an avid collector of his work – has called Antony Price, a British fashion designer who came to prominence in the 1980s, as ‘criminally underrated’. Best known for creating the visual universe of Roxy Music, and staging similarly dramatic runway shows in the decade, the ‘architect of glamour’ made a welcome runway return in November, courtesy of a one-off salon show with London-based label 16Arlington. Staged in the latter’s east London studio, the high-profile cast – from Lily Allen to Adwoa Aboah – prowled the runway in the high-voltage creations, puffing on cigarettes before posing for photographer Felix Cooper. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ Capaldo told Wallpaper*. ‘To have been able to witness such a legend at work has probably been one of the most incredible and pivotal moments in my career. It's been really magical.’ Sadly, it was announced that Price passed away at the age of 80 on 17 December 2025.

READ: ‘Architect of glamour’ Antony Price makes a high-voltage return to the runway with 16Arlington

Dario Vitale said goodbye to Versace

It was to be one of fashion’s shortest tenures – just a few short months after his debut, in December, it was announced that Italian designer Dario Vitale would be exiting Versace. The former design director of Miu Miu, and the successor to Donatella Versace, the news came as some surprise: Vitale’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week, though divisive, had won over critics and was already being worn by celebrities (Olivia Dean wore custom Versace for a recent SNL appearance, while Addison Rae was also an early adopter). We said that Vitale had ‘stripped back conceptions and ushered in an energetic new vision: sexually charged and ‘reckless’, one that harkened back to the dress codes of Gianni Versace without nostalgia.’ On social media, the announcement came with some disappointment at the way in which designers are given so little time to make their mark: ‘There’s a disturbing pattern across the fashion industry: giant companies, plucking creative directors, placing them on a pedestal, parading them as the future, and then discarding them just as quickly,’ wrote casting director Anita Bitton in a much-shared Instagram post.

In Vienna, there was a chance to see Helmut Lang’s fashion archive for the first time

Though he exited the industry 20 years ago, Helmut Lang’s influence on fashion remains palpable. A definitive figure of the 1990s, he proposed a vision of sensually-charged minimalism and utility which continues to define the way that we dress today. He also changed the way we consume fashion, too: his memorable New York runway shows stripped back the artifice of the 1980s and its elevated runway, drafting friends to walk alongside supermodels, while stripped-back campaigns were captured by a young Juergen Teller. This revolutionary spirit is celebrated in ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, an exhibition which opened in December at MAK in Vienna, which marks the first time Helmut Lang’s fashion archive is on show to the public – from memorable garments to archival film, ephemera, even recreations of elements from his equally definitive stores (Lang donated his archive to the institution in 2011). ‘Looking at Helmut Lang’s store architecture, it became obvious: his stores were all about directing the gaze. This is also what exhibitions need to do, but here it was essential. A photo wouldn’t suffice; you have to experience it,’ curator Marlies Wirth told Wallpaper* of the exhibition, which is designed to immerse you in the Lang universe – all the way down to the floor, which features a seating plan from a runway show.

READ: Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress today

Marty Supreme birthed the year’s viral garment – thanks to Timothée Chalamet

The Marty Supreme press tour has already come with some memorable sartorial moments – the film’s star Timothée Chalamet and girlfiend Kylie Jenner in matching orange Chrome Hearts for one – though it was more humble track jacket which went viral in December (the Josh Safdie-directed film is out on Christmas Day in the United States). The nylon windbreaker, created by the film’s production company A24 alongside California-based label Nahmias, was part of a merch drop for the film – adorned with ‘Marty Supreme’ and three gold stars, Chalamet has barely taken it off since. Pop-ups in New York and London have seen queues around the block to lay their hands on the $250 jacket – with resale sites selling the garment for up to for up to £4,366 (that’s over 20 times its original price). It speaks not only to A24’s marketing prowess, but also to the rise of movie merch – at the end of 2024, Mary Cleary explored its rise for Wallpaper*. ‘How it will continue to play out is yet to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: movie merch will continue to take over fashion,’ she wrote – and was right.

A timber façade with a pink noren curtain. Centuries-old eaves reflected cleanly in mirrors. Minimal aluminium lines in soft cherry blossom tones. And a wall of glass framing a timeless raked stone garden. HaaT, the Issey Miyake brand rooted in textile innovation, has opened its first flagship store in Kyoto, a minimalist renovation of the historic timber structure of a former sugar store dating back 150 years.

Designed by Tokujin Yoshioka, the store seamlessly blends the past with the future, echoing HaaT’s philosophy of creating a dialogue between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary experimentation.

A Kyoto-style latticed wood shopfront, with neat waves of curved rooftop tiles, is balanced with a signature pop of colour: a perfectly pink curtain at the entrance. Sliding the door open and crossing the stone threshold, the interior feels pure and light, with Yoshioka reinventing the building’s story-etched heritage into a minimalist expression of modern lines, tones and textures.

For Makiko Minagawa, the creative director of HaaT, who spent decades working alongside Issey Miyake, Kyoto is a key hub for the brand (as well as her hometown). HaaT works with numerous textile artisans in the region, as well as across Japan and India, to create inventive materials rooted in meticulous crafts heritage.

Speaking at HaaT / Kyoto ahead of its opening, Minagawa tells Wallpaper*: ‘We have been working with Kyoto’s artisans for many years, creating textiles. The number of artisans is decreasing yearly but we want to keep supporting them and developing creations together.’

She adds: ‘Kyoto is a very important place. It has more than a thousand years of history and artisans are always trying to create something new. This spirit has nurtured Kyoto’s handcraft traditions. We really want Kyoto’s artisans to keep thriving – so we want to continue working with them and hope this store will create more opportunities to showcase their work.’

The starting point of the design concept was simple, according to Minagawa: ‘We’ve been working with Yoshioka-san for a long time so I didn’t need to give him specific instructions. I just said that Kyoto’s machiya townhouses are generally all brown with white walls – and I’d like some pink.

‘From there, the pink concept expanded – soft pinks, almost white pinks, various shades. Yoshioka-san created the Olympic torch from a cherry blossom-dyed aluminium. He said that pink suits Kyoto and the pink idea gradually grew.’

A sense of Kyoto imbues the new HaaT store from the start. The shop, on Aneyakoji Street, has an unusually wide façade measuring 12m. Here, a grey stone boulder – reminiscent of a tea-room entrance – is set smoothly into concrete on the ground beneath a pink curtain floating in the breeze, creating a soft transition between in and out.

Entering the space, there is an immediate sense of lightness not typically associated with often dimly lit Kyoto machiya townhouse architecture. Centre stage is an updated framework made of new timber, with a traditional stone garden at the rear visible through a wall of glass.

The atmosphere is lightened by a soft contemporary material palette. There are smooth swathes of light grey concrete floors, contrasting gently with a pink-white shade painted on walls, as well as cleanly cubed display and counter units.

A sense of dynamism is evoked by accents of aluminium, tinged with soft tones of cherry blossom pink – with clothing hanging from a horizontal hanging rail cutting cleanly across one side of the space, creating angular lines of shadows; plus a wall of modular pink panels which are adjustable for displays.

For Yoshioka, the space is shaped by an essential notion of creating something new, rather than replicating the past, as he explains: ‘The design undertaken in this project was not merely an effort to reproduce a traditional townhouse or to renovate its interior, but rather a comprehensive reconfiguration of the building itself.

‘By retaining only the structural framework and roof and redesigning the entire architecture – including the façade – the project sought to reconstruct the structure as a new and original work of architecture.’

The dialogue between past and future is perhaps best captured at the rear of the store. Here – Minagawa’s favourite spot – a glance up reveals the beauty of the original wooden eaves overhanging a large window framing garden views. The timber craftsmanship is subtly highlighted by mirrored surfaces on walls either side, evoking a clean and light infinity effect.

Yoshioka adds: ‘This fusion gives life to a space where the spirit of Makiko Minagawa’s creations breathes quietly. In this harmony between inorganic material and traces of meticulous handwork, a new form emerges to bridge the past and the future.’

Since launching in 2000, HaaT has carved a distinct creative path as a womenswear brand focused first on textiles, fusing heritage craftsmanship with exploratory technology, as brought to life in three lines: Every Month, Every Week and Every Day.

Textile innovations are written into HaaT’s DNA – from lightweight crinkly Kyo Chijimi fabric, which is woven with twisted threads in pure spring water in nearby Shiga, to kabira, an Indian hand-stitching technique creating soft dimensional surfaces reminiscent of Japanese sashiko embroidery.

At the new HaaT store, exclusive items include the cloud-like texture of light Kumo Shibori pieces and graphic patterned wool clothing called Roving Kogin, woven in shades of pink or grey and white.

‘My inspirations come from the makers we work with,’ explains Minagawa. ‘Japan and India share many similarities. Both cultures make things that last, repair what is worn and have traditions that evolve. Sustainability is essential because it keeps traditions alive. And for the future, the idea of always creating something new is important.’

HaaT / Kyoto. 569 Kikuyacho, Yanaginobanba Higashi-iru, Aneyakoji-dori, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto

isseymiyake.com

We are a peripatetic generation: restlessly curious and forever plotting the next trip. It’s a trait that proves surprisingly useful when it comes to gifting. Travel-minded presents rarely miss the mark; they signal care in its most pragmatic form, helping to plan, elevate or ease someone’s journey.

Our edit strikes a balance between function, comfort and design intelligence. True to Wallpaper*’s sensibility, it gathers the sharpest designs in tech and lifestyle. The categories may be familiar, but each pick brings a fresh, forward twist on the pieces we reach for time and again.

For more design-driven gifting ideas and aesthetically attuned stocking fillers, explore our other seasonal gift guides.

The Wallpaper* travel gift guide 2025

Analogue in-flight entertainment

Five-star treatment

A chic name-drop

Escape artist

Pleat elite

An order keeper

Mile-high comforter

Free roaming

Lights out

A mood mixer

A reset wash

A flight-mode facial

A pocketable friend

A power move

Do not disturb

The legacies of late Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will forever be linked, thanks to a certain black turtleneck. But the relationship between their respective companies was less about a work uniform and more about a mutual passion for design, innovation and freedom for the end-user.

That shared ethos is being celebrated today with the reveal of the iPhone Pocket, a clever wearable accessory from Apple and Issey Miyake. Made from a single 3D-knit sleeve, the stretchy pleated pouch is a playful way to carry your iPhone, AirPods, keys, chewing gum and other everyday essentials without the need for a bulky bag.

The limited-edition release, available in select markets online and in stores on Friday (14 November 2025), is a stylish new companion to Apple products. Depending on what length you choose, the iPhone Pocket can be worn over the shoulder, looped over a tote or simply hand-carried.

‘The way that people wear their products has been changing,’ Apple’s industrial design leader Molly Anderson tells Wallpaper*. ‘Your choice of phone and choice of accessories is a reflection of your style more and more.’

Anderson and her team had long been admirers of the Issey Miyake brand and had spent time in its Tokyo studio to better understand its philosophy and ways of making. The Issey Miyake team, too, paid visits to Apple Park in Cupertino, California. ‘There wasn't really an intention to make anything at all. We were just interested to speak to each other and see what was inspiring,’ Anderson says.

Invariably, though, a formal collaboration felt right. The iPhone Pocket grew out of a very simple question, according to Yoshiyuki Miyamae, designer of A-POC Able Issey Miyake: How can you wear an iPhone? ‘The iPhone is now present in almost every moment of our everyday life…We thought about how to make its presence more joyful and creative,’ Miyamae wrote in an email.

For its design, Miyamae and his team implemented a continuation of a pioneering concept that Issey Miyake introduced in 1998 – APOC (‘a piece of cloth’), in which garments are produced from a unified piece of 3D-knit fabric. Similarly, the iPhone Pocket relies on the APOC philosophy and resembles a long tube sock, with a slit in its middle. The simple design, though, belies the amount of R&D and experimentation required to get it just right. Everything, from the vibrant colour palette (the iPhone pocket will be available in eight hues) to the elegant translucent paper packaging, was considered.

Still, fun is part and parcel (pun intended) to the new product. As its user fills their iPhone Pocket, it will bulge, like a boa constrictor after lunch. ‘We were really charmed by this idea that it’s not only creating a shape which reveals its content, but it also allows people to peek in and see their phone screen,’ Anderson says.

Miyamae thinks the iPhone Pocket anticipates our relationship with technology in the future. ‘As we move forward, the tools and devices surrounding us will more than likely evolve towards a style that is more personal and sensory, into devices that can be easily worn,’ he said.

It’s also a way to connect both companies’ pasts with the present. ‘If Miyake had known about this project, I think he would have been delighted and said, "here begins a new possibility,”’ Miyamae added.

apple.com

‘Can anything be considered a garment, as long as it’s on the body?’ This was the question posed by Satoshi Kondo with his A/W 2025 collection for Issey Miyake, presented at Paris’ Le Carrousel du Louvre earlier this year.

Backdropped by a series of performers enacting artist Erwin Wurm’s ‘one-minute sculptures’ – developed by the Austrian artist in the 1980s, the continuing project sees Wurm encourage public participants to interact with everyday objects for 60 seconds, becoming an ephemeral ‘sculpture’ – the energetic show saw garments twisted in silhouette or context, from trompe l’oeil prints of knitwear which ran across twisted plissé gowns to heat-pressed fabrics used to create structural silhouettes evocative of paper dolls.

Shape shifter: Issey Miyake A/W 2025

Elsewhere, quotidien objects were transformed: a ‘paper bag’, printed with an imaginary exhibition titled ‘Abstract, Concrete, and In-Between’, became a dress, complete with a pair of handles on its side. ‘[It’s about] the freedom of wearing [clothing] in one’s own way and the exciting possibilities that are yet to be discovered within the garments,’ said Kondo.

It continues the evolution of the Japanese brand undertaken by the Kyoto-born designer and his studio, which draws on the namesake designer’s pioneering spirit without being trapped in the past. ‘Miyake was never guided by trends from the wider industry. There was always a story to tell, and that story was original. We’ve continued a creative process that doesn’t allow too much influence from the outside,’ Kondo told Wallpaper* earlier this year.

‘Miyake was tenacious and stubborn. It’s something that echoes with me, too – that tenacity, that perseverance. He continued until he found something really original. It’s a mindset. When you want a really beautiful flower, you don’t go to the florist, you go out into the forest.’ 

This article appears in the November 2025 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 9 October. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

That pre-holiday packing panic? It hits every time. What makes the cut and what gets left behind? With strict baggage limits and an overload of must-have options, it’s easy to feel like you’re missing the mark. Whether you’re planning a weekend away or a long-term escape, the Wallpaper* edit of travel essentials – spanning tech, beauty, and style – is your passport to packing smart and impeccably.

The Wallpaper* guide to travel essentials

A trusty companion

A pocketable friend

A melodic companion

A perfect multitasker

A personal choice of sunglasses

Revitalising goodness

A clever hack

A romantic notebook

A stylish writing instrument

Printed matter

Despite temperatures tipping 35 degrees, Florentine menswear fair Pitti Uomo – a twice-yearly showcase around the city’s Fortezza da Basso which took place this week – nonetheless attracted its usual throngs of press, buyers and aficionados who are on the search for what’s new in men’s fashion (true to sartorial form, even in the searing midday heat, blazers remained on).

It is in the converted 16th-century fortress where brands from around the world come to show their latest wares in a series of stands and specially erected pavilions (early estimates have over 730 brands showing at the event, with around 43 per cent coming from outside of Italy). And, even if the scale is initially overwhelming, it gives a rare chance to speak to designers and CEOs in the presence of their clothing. When we recently straw-polled Wallpaper* editors on what they were most looking forward to over fashion month, Milan contributor Scarlett Conlon said she liked the way that menswear month allowed you the breathing room to be able to see the clothing up close – and nowhere is that more true than Pitti Uomo.

Though there is another side of Pitti Uomo: a series of runway shows by the fair’s guest designers which unfold in spaces around the city (or, in the case of Homme Plissé Issey Miyake this season, on its bucolic outskirts). It can often be illuminating to see designers in new contexts, and to unpick their choice of location which – befitting the cradle of the Renaissance – are often steeped in history (previous guest designers have included Raf Simons, Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner, as well as labels like Givenchy and Jil Sander).

This season, there were plenty of highlights – from a dramatic dinner party in the baroque gardens of Villa Bardini, to an outing from Homme Plissé Issey Miyake which paid ode to the colours and textures of Italy. Here, selected by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, the best bits of the week.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s ode to Italy

Earlier this year it was announced that Homme Plissé Issey Miyake would pause showing in Paris, shifting to a nomadic schedule which will see the Japanese label – part of the Miyake Design Studio roster – show in locations around the world. A guest spot at Pitti Uomo marked the first chapter, shuttling guests to the outskirts of the city by coach, before drafting a cavalcade of black cars to drive up Monte Morello to the Medicea della Petraia, a 16th-century Medici villa where the show was held. Unfolding in the Renaissance gardens, the collection featured brand’s signature knife-cut pleats in a multitude of iterations – the colours and textures inspired by a series of research trips in Italy over the past year (one fabric evoked the look and texture of linen, while others colour-matched lemons, courgette flowers and the sun-soaked pastels of Cinque Terre’s streets). ‘The collection was inspired by not only Florence but places throughout Italy – there are many beautiful cities and landscapes,’ the Homme Plissé design team told Wallpaper*.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Margaret Howell’s cooling gelato pit-stop

Margaret Howell’s Florentine outpost has one of the most enviable positions in the city, just a stone’s throw away from the River Arno on Piazza Carlo Goldoni. On Wednesday afternoon, a party with the UKFT (UK Fashion and Textile Association) – of which Margaret Howell managing director Caroline Attwood has recently joined the board – provided a welcome pitstop. Alongside the requisite glasses of sparkling wine was a gelato truck from Florence institution Vivoli serving scoops of vanilla and pistachio – of the latter flavour, a number of guests remarked that the subtle green hue would fit seamlessly into one of Howell’s collections.

A sensual summer outing from rising Italian star Niccolò Pasqualetti

There was no denying that the searing morning heat was something of a distraction to the young Italian designer’s Niccolò Pasqualetti’s S/S 2026 show, though their clever, sliced-away garments – imbued with an sultry undercurrent – looked good against the bright blue Florentine skyline (the show was held on the industrial rooftop of the modern Maggio Musicale Fiorentino concert hall). Citing ambiguity as the hallmark of their work (‘the fluidity of stone and the sensuality of water’ reads the brand’s Instagram bio), the collection was defined by a deconstructionist impulse, with assymetric tailoring cut-away to reveal its lining, or billowing white poplin shirts which had been twisted to hang off the body with an in-built shoulder strap. Indeed, a feeling of undress – or being in the state of undressing – ran through collection, while a use of silk, linen and cotton seemed a nod towards traditional Italian fabrications (albeit reworked into their own vernacular). ‘Without nostalgia, we find ways to layer the past, and build new meanings for the future,’ the designer described, with the late hyper-pop pioneer Sophie providing the finale‘s moving soundtrack.

Herno’s all-encompassing, wear-anywhere men’s wardrobe

The Herno pavilion at Pitti Uomo is always a cool haven away from the main hustle of the fair, seeing the Italian fashion house – best known for its innovative fabrications – show a comprehensive menswear offering which spans categories and styles. Designed for the man who traverses ‘scenery, cities, rhythms’, this season‘s collection was divided into seven sections – from the more classic ‘Excellence’ line, which comprises more archetypal menswear styles in rareified materials, from silk-cashmere to double-faced wool (albeit in featherweight lightness for summer), to the sharp-lined ‘Advance’, a minimal sportswear line inspired by technical hiking gear. Others referenced collegiate attire in preppy striped shirts and Herno-motif cardigans, or drew on the heritage fabrics for which Herno is famous for. As has been the brand’s modus operandi in recent seasons, the focus was on a ‘full look’ – from trousers to knitwear, and all that’s in between – a shift away from the brand’s outerwear roots (the company began by producing raincoats with an innovative castor-oil coating in the 1960s).

Brunello Cucinelli’s dramatic dinner party

Located on the Costa San Giorgio – a steep ten-minute-or-so walk upwards from the Ponte Vecchio – is the serene Villa Bardini, built in 1641 and best known for its magical baroque gardens. It was here, overlooking the city, that Solomeo-based designer Brunello Cucinelli hosted his twice-yearly dinner party, which heralds the unofficial start of men’s fashion month (as such, it has a back-to-school feel, albeit in luxurious style). Illuminated with rows of candles, the dinner itself comprised a spread of local antipasto, before Mr Cucinelli’s famous paccheri pasta – in its rich red tomato sauce – was served from bowls so large it takes two chefs to carry. The next day, the designer revealed his S/S 2026 collection at the main fair, where the colour red was also on Mr Cucinelli’s mind – with shades spanning dusty pink, cherry red and burgundy, while a zingy tangerine shirt was a highlight. In terms of fit, jackets and trousers were cut to a longer length: an appeal to younger consumers who are erring away from the brand’s more traditional ankle-bearing crop.

Tommy Hilfiger’s one-night-only social club

‘The art of dressing up is back,’ said Tommy Hilfiger on Tuesday evening, when the American designer opened the doors to a one-night-only private member’s club – ‘The Hilfiger Social Club’ – in Florence’s Palazzo Portinari Salviati. Amid white linen-covered tables, branded cushions, director’s chairs and the requisite Aperol Spritz station, models wandered wearing a new ‘sartorial’ collection, ‘Tommy Hilfiger New York’. Offering dressed-up riffs on Hilfiger’s preppy uniform, inspired by the traditions of London’s Savile Row, the designer said it was a response to a change in the way men are dressing. ‘[People] are embracing an elevated look and it’s brought this great energy back to tailoring traditions,’ said Hilfiger, who was mobbed by well-wishers when he popped into the event. ‘When I started my brand 40 years ago, I set out to give those traditional codes a fun American twist. That's what we’re doing again today – introducing a new chapter in our menswear story.’

Against a painterly Florentine sky, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged a one-night-only runway show in the sprawling Renaissance gardens of Villa Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello, just outside of the Tuscan city.

The occasion was Pitti Uomo, the annual menswear fair that takes place in Florence each season, which, alongside the main event at the Fortezza da Basso, invites a handful of guest designers to stage a runway show as part of the schedule (previous designers have included Raf Simons, Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose).

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake S/S 2026 at Pitti Uomo in Florence

The S/S 2026 show also marked the start of a new nomadic strategy for the Japanese label, which falls under the Miyake Design Studio umbrella. Shifting from Paris – where its spot on the schedule went to IM Men (as seen in January 2025), a more recent addition to the Issey Miyake roster – Homme Plissé will now show its collections at a series of locations around the world.

Aptly, the show required a journey of its own, with guests driven from Florence to the outskirts of the city by coach, before transferring to a fleet of black cars to navigate Monte Morello’s twisting roadways. On arrival, the Villa’s dramatic main courtyard – lined with floor-to-ceiling frescoes depicting the triumphs of the Medici family – was transformed into a playful exhibition space depicting the origins of the collection.

Amid sculptural displays featuring Homme Plissé’s boldly hued garments – distinct for their heat-pressed knife pleats, which do not crease when stored – was a series of colour swatches that the team had created through a number of journeys to Italy over the past year. The swatches included ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ and ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’, each derived from the painstaking colour-matching of real-life objects using paint palettes taken on the team’s travels (as well as to Florence, the trips took them across Italy, from Liguria to Venezia).

‘The collection was inspired by not only Florence but places throughout Italy – there are many beautiful cities and landscapes,’ a spokesperson for the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team told Wallpaper* (the brand runs without a formal head designer). ‘This collection is built upon colours found in the urban fabric and nature of Italian cities.’

As such, the paint brush became a symbol in the collection, appearing in a plissé painter’s vest in the collection’s opening look, while a series of degradé prints was inspired by photographs of paint brushes after they had been used. Other prints featured painterly splashes and swirls – designed to evoke the brushstrokes of the design team’s research pages – while a typically vivid palette spanned hues of lemon yellow, aubergine, and bold shades of blue.

Other nods to Italy came in a ‘linen-like’ iteration of the Homme Plissé pleated fabric, cleverly manipulated to give the appearance and feel of the airy summer fabric synonymous with Italian style. Meanwhile, playful double-breasted suits and jackets – also rendered in the plissé material – nodded towards the Italian tradition of sartorialism and tailoring, one particularly celebrated at Pitti Uomo each season.

The Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team say that this approach is designed to ‘broaden our perspective... We believe that the knowledge and experiences gained this way will be the foundation on which we further build our design and making.’ As such, the new travelling concept is called ‘Open Studio’, started with an aim to ‘connect with local communities and a global creative scene’.

As the show took place, a series of sprinklers misted the gardens, part of an installation by Andrea Faraguna and Michael Kleine – a celebration of the grandeur of the everyday routines of life. Out of the mist, and against a picture-perfect Tuscan sunset, marched models in the collection’s closing looks – a series of parka-style jackets, surreally adorned with coat hangers.

Earlier in the day, the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team had demonstrated the magic of these items at a press preview – when folded away in a series of origami-like actions, they transform into a garment bag, ready for the next journey onwards. Where that next destination is – or when the team will get there – remains to be seen, but with this Pitti Uomo outing, this looks like a brand on an impressive forward trajectory.

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After a smattering of off-schedule shows in London this past weekend, including outings from Martine Rose and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 officially commences today in Florence (17 June 2025) with the opening of the 108th edition of the city’s historic menswear fair. In surging mid-30s heat, this season’s guest shows will include a no-doubt colourful outing from Homme Plissé Issey Miyake at Villa Medicea della Petraia on the slopes of Monte Morello on Wednesday evening, before eyes turn to Milan on Friday, seeing the latest collections from Prada, Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana shown amid a slew of presentations, showrooms and (much-needed) aperitivo.

The final stop is Paris, where – despite a packed six-day-long schedule – it is Jonathan Anderson’s debut show for Dior which will absorb the fashion world’s attention (the former Loewe creative director is now overseeing Dior’s menswear, womenswear and haute couture). Indeed, when the Wallpaper* style editors and contributors were straw-polled on what they were most looking forward to this menswear month, everyone put his inaugural collection for the Parisian house at the top of their list. But there was plenty more – read on for everything the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to at Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026: what the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to

Jason Hughes, fashion and creative director

Like most people in fashion, I’m most looking forward to Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior on the Friday of Paris Fashion Week – I was a big fan of his work at Loewe, where he created such a universe around his clothing. I own a lot of pieces he designed there, so I’m excited to see what he has in store. If it’s anything like his work at Loewe – or indeed his work at eponymous London label JW Anderson – it will shift the fashion needle, and have us all wanting something new.

In Milan, it's all about Prada: you can always expect the unexpected from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, from the show set – which in recent seasons has included dripping goo, sci-fi tunnels and surreal officescapes – to the clothes themselves. Elsewhere, I've been impressed by London-based designer Kiko Kostadinov in the last couple of seasons. His idiosyncratic approach to pattern cutting and colour always veers towards the strange, in the best possible way. He’s showing his latest menswear collection on the final Sunday of Paris, closing out Men’s Fashion Month.

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

One of my highlights has actually already happened: a surprise off-schedule show from British designer Martine Rose this weekend in London, held among a maze of ruffled boudoir curtains in an empty job centre close to west London’s Edgware Road (on a lower floor, Rose had curated a market from her creative community of designers, record sellers and magazine publishers). Befitting the show set (‘our version of a salon’), Rose said that the collection was about finding beauty in the unexpected, seeing her trademark underground style (queer and cruising culture have been a longtime reference) softened with flourishes of lace, satin and silk, while silhouettes were shrunken to the body. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched or too tight, a bit awkward but still sexy, I hope,’ she said after the show, tequila already in hand. It was. Weird, sexy, desirable, and entirely on her own terms, it was my favourite collection of hers in some time.

Elsewhere, I'm of course excited for Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut (who isn’t?), while in Milan I join Jason in looking forward to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision for Prada menswear (as ever, it will likely set the tone for the season ahead). An on-schedule Saint Laurent menswear show, on the opening day of Paris Fashion Week, is also on my highlights list, as is a duo of exhibition openings (also in Paris) from two of the city’s boundary-pushing designers: Demna, who will stage a retrospective of his work at Balenciaga prior to leaving for Gucci next month, and Rick Owens’ ‘Temple of Love’ exhibition, which opens at the Palais Galliera on June 28.

Scarlett Conlon, Milan contributor

The big reveal that I’m most looking forward to is, of course, Jonathan Anderson at Dior during the Paris leg of the shows. I’m fascinated to see how he brings the idiosyncratic charm that he has carved out a niche in to the storied French maison.

Elsewhere, with presentations outnumbering shows in Milan, I always love the opportunity that menswear provides to get up and close with the sartorial expertise of the clothes and talk with the designers; Brioni, Tod’s, and Brunello Cucinelli are always highlights, each finding new ways to make their super luxe offering feel relevant and fresh (and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already planned what time I’ll be at the famous parmesan wheel at the latter).

Orla Brennan, contributing fashion writer

Besides seeing what Jonathan Anderson will do with his first collection for Dior – a moment we are all very excited about – I’m most looking forward to Prada. If Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ last few shows are anything to go by, I predict an intriguing show set and cast of interesting (possibly celebrity) characters coming down the runway – plus, of course, their usual agenda-setting fashion, guaranteed to shift what we find desirable.

I’m also looking forward to Wales Bonner’s return to the Paris Fashion Week schedule. The brand isn’t known for big spectacles, but the stories, music and clothes are always so clever and soulful – a testament to the eponymous designer’s superlative world-building ability.

Read the full Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 preview here.

Milan Design Week 2025 saw the fashion contingent put on its most comprehensive showing at the design fair to date, taking up residence in some of the city’s storied landmarks to do so.

From Gucci’s ‘Bamboo Encounters’ staged in the cloisters of San Simpliciano and Aesop’s ‘The Second Skin’ exhibition in the sacristy of the Chiesa del Carmine, to Loewe at the Palazzo Citterio and Prada Frames taking over the iconic Milano Centrale station, the showcase proved a heady melting pot of sensorial immersions and design collaborations.

Here, Scarlett Conlon highlights the standout fashion moments of Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2025 – from Loewe’s playful artist-designed teapots to a blockbuster Charlotte Perriand exhibition from Saint Laurent.

Georg Jensen’s ‘Gelateria Danese’

Danish design house Georg Jensen provided Milan Design Week’s most palatable pit stop: Gelateria Danese, an ephemeral ice cream parlour that drew inspiration from the interiors of Copenhagen’s Palace Hotel (opened in 1910, Georg Jensen provided furnishings and silverware) while referencing Milanese café culture. On the menu was traditional affogato (coffee was sourced from local roastery Prolog), while an array of ice cream flavours were dreamed up by Copenhagen-based Italian chef Chiara Barla. Each was served on Georg Jensen silverware, from coupes to tub-shaped cups, as well as spoons taken from ‘The Artisans Series’. ‘You’ll find pieces you’d typically associate with ice cream, but instead of being disposable, they’re crafted in silver,’ said recently appointed creative director Paula Gerbase. ‘Not only creating durable objects, but elevating the fleeting moments we use them in.’

The Row’s first homeware offering

In signature understated style, The Row launched ‘Home’ at Salone. Comprising a collection of three handwoven throws and a quilted blanket, the Olsens’ first foray into luxury home design was presented elegantly draped over steel and bronze rails by Julian Schnabel in the frescoed rooms of what will shortly become the New York-based brand’s Milanese HQ. Created with artisans in Kashmir, India, each blanket takes between 600 hours to craft and employs a different weaving technique from which they take their name: the Classic, The Row Weave, and the Himalayan Weave, arriving in four colourways – mink, ivory, brown and black. Lightweight at less than 14.5 microns and discreetly embroidered with the brand’s initials, they stand to become one of the year’s most coveted IYKYK home improvements.

Prada Frames boards a restored Gio Ponti train

As the city’s most majestic portal, Milano Centrale station proved the perfect location for the fourth edition of Prada Frames, ‘In Transit’. The annual event curated by Formafantasma that invites panellists from all areas of design, including architecture, engineering and environmental planning, into thematic dialogue has become one of the most popular attractions at Design Week, taking place in iconic landmarks around the city. This year, attendees were invited into the station’s Padiglione Reale that once served as the waiting room for Italian royalty and heads of state before boarding the Arlecchino train designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s and recently restored by the Fondazione FS Italiane (out of the entire original fleet, this was the only one viable to be brought back to its former glory). Over the course of the week, discussions on digital, global, material and hacking infrastructures, along with interrogations of infrastructures of power, played out on board, seeking to examine ‘the impact of digital revolutions and global distribution networks on daily life’. Once again brilliantly introduced and contextualised by Alice Rawsthorn, several key takeaways included the necessity for infrastructure to collaborate rather than colonise, integrating ancestral knowledge to reframe industrial design, and the urgent need to re-evaluate industrial infrastructures to work in conjunction with the natural world rather than see them as separate entities.

READ: Aboard Gio Ponti's colourful Arlecchino train in Milan, a conversation about design with Formafantasma

Stone Island’s ‘sonic experience’

Stone Island invited visitors to its ‘sonic experience’ called ‘Friendly Pressure: Studio One’, staged in collaboration with Friendly Pressure, the London-based sound system studio founded by Shivas Howard Brown. A study of the textures of sound, the week-long programme of events took place in spaces that had bespoke hi-fidelity audio systems installed by Friendly Pressure in direct response to the precise dimensions of the space to rouse emotions akin to ‘the golden age of recorded music, treating sound as both a sensory and physical experience,’ the brand relayed. Studio One, where the events took place, was inspired by Carlo Scarpa, while inside soundproofing by Soundwave Jasmine and CC-Tapis rugs ensured the desired sound dispersion. Mirroring Stone Island’s sartorial approach to how materials respond to their environment, an allegorical experience emerged, parallelling reactions to touch and sound.

Louis Vuitton’s latest Objets Nomades series

Louis Vuitton revealed its 2025 home collection by staging a takeover of the neoclassical residence of Palazzo Serbelloni in the centre of Milan alongside its Objets Nomades series. Featuring designs from leading artists that the Paris fashion house has collaborated with over the years – including Patricia Urquiola, Jaime Hayon and Atelier Biagetti – it drew special attention to the work of futurist artist Fortunato Depero and Charlotte Perriand, whose textile work for the house was realised for the first time. Elsewhere, a special-edition trunk celebrating the house’s original design icon, the Malle Vaisselier, opened to reveal a service of refined porcelain and delicate glasses. It was the more whimsical items on display that drew the most attention: the Odyssée table football and a pinball machine inspired by the A/W 2025 fashion show by creative director Pharrell Williams were designed for Studio Louis Vuitton by Estúdio Campana and balanced the splendour with a cheeky wink.

Miu Miu’s ‘Literary Club’

The doors to The Miu Miu Literary Club opened once again during Salone, inviting guests into the Circolo Filologico Milanese that had been given a modernist Miu Miu makeover. Conceived under the direction of Miuccia Prada and curated by writer and researcher Olga Campofreda, the theme for this year was ‘A Woman’s Education’ and saw two days of panel discussions exploring the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the pages of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1954 coming-of-age novella ‘The Inseparables’ and Fumiko Enchi’s groundbreaking 1957 novel charting female desire, ‘The Waiting Years’. On day one, author Lou Stoppard moderated a panel discussion exploring ‘the power of girlhood’ in the context of De Beauvoir’s work with Lauren Elkin, Geetanjali Shree, and Veronica Raimo, and on day two Kai Isaiah Jamal delved into Enchi’s with through the lens of ‘love, sex, and desire’ with Nicola Dinan, Naoise Dolan, and Sarah Manguso, both championing the voices of female literary voices past, present and future.

Valextra’s ‘travelling sculpture’ with Zaven

Milanese leather goods brand Valextra is famed for sitting at the intersection of fashion and design with an archive dating back to 1937 that includes collaborations with AG Fronzoni and the first Compasso D’Oro award. For its Salone project this year, it continued its Vocabulario Project, inviting the Venice-based design studio Zaven to work with one of its most famous creations from the last century and recontextualise it through an idiosyncratic lens. The result is the ‘Costa 70 x Zaven’ suitcase, an identical re-creation of the Giovanni Fontana-designed luggage that dates back to the 1960s filled with a series of abstract resin objects that Zaven designed to be engineered into a build-it-yourself home sculpture. ‘Responsive and thought-provoking design has been at the core of Valextra’s DNA since 1937 and Zaven mirrors our own passion in realising objects of excellence in both a functional and meaningful way with this exceptional reinvention of an archival icon,’ says Valextra CEO Xavier Rougeaux.

READ: Valextra’s collaboration with Zaven is a ‘travelling sculpture’ with its own suitcase

Brioni bottles a rare fragrance with Lalique

If time is regarded as one of the greatest luxuries, then Brioni bottled it for Salone. A project four years in the making was unveiled at its Via Gesu flagship to mark Brioni’s 80th anniversary. Beloved for its exquisite attention to sartorial detail, the brand unveiled the Dualité Crystal Edition Perfume in collaboration with Lalique, an ode to artisanal craftsmanship and the art of olfactory. The glass bottle – of which only 18 are available – stands at nearly 40cm high and features an internal sculpture that was created using the cire-perdue method, the lost-wax technique first used by René Lalique in 1893 and passed down through generations of glassmakers. Inside, the Extrait de Parfum scent was created by master perfumer Michel Almairac over a seven-year-period and features notes of green apple, violet, Ambroxan, and rare iris butter. ‘This collaboration between our maisons became one of shared passion, representing everything we stand for: a dedication to time, the selection of precious raw materials, exquisite artisanry and the difference that human touch makes,’ says Brioni design director, Norbert Stumpfl.

Luca Faloni collaborates with Winetage

Luca Faloni partnered with Winetage, the fellow Italian brand that upcycles wine barrels into original design objects, to create a daybed upholstered in its exquisite brushed linen fabrics. Crafted from wood that still bears the red-wine stains and aromas from years of maturing the best Italian vintages, the daybed is furnished with padded tubes in fruity Bordeaux-red tones. Designed to spotlight the best of Made in Italy, the finished product combines fashion, wine, and design, providing the perfect resting spot to indulge in all three.

Missoni Home opens new Milan store

Missoni Home might be a mainstay in many a Milano dwelling, but it didn’t have its own spot in the city it calls home until this design week. Beside the brand’s Via Solferino showroom, the first dedicated Missoni Home boutique opened this week with its interior decor riffing on several of the brand’s most distinctive signatures, including degradé-painted pillars, zig-zag wallpaper, and its joyful rainbow colour palette, featuring a special curation of its expansive home offering.

Tod’s celebrates Made in Italy craft

As one of Italy’s most recognisable design icons, the Tod’s Gommino driving shoe holds a special place in the Made in Italy playbook. For Salone, the brand released a limited edition of the driving shoe (above) and unveiled a special coffee-table photography tome, ‘Italian Hands; Artisanal Stories From Italy’. A celebration of the processes and products that are exported all over the world, it features prominent Italian tastemakers alongside the artisans with whom they collaborate and promote – including master Murano glassblower Giberto Arrivabene, master of terracotta Rosario Spina, artisan of brass and bronze Ernesto Carati; and pesto connoisseur Christian Belforte. ‘This book is a tribute to those who, every day, with passion and commitment, contribute to keeping a fundamental part of our cultural identity alive,’ says Tod’s group president Diego Della Valle. ‘It is a recognition of those who know how to enhance craftsmanship, making it a symbol of authentic, timeless quality, even for new generations.’

Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters

Few materials are as synonymous with Gucci as bamboo. One of the fashion house’s defining motifs since it was first used on its iconic handbag in 1947, its legacy defines the innovation inherent to the Florentine brand. For Milan Design Week this year, the house invited seven artists to give their take on the material in their own mediums for its installation ‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’. Curated by 2050+ founder Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and staged in the cloisters of the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, works ranged from a sculpture by Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez and a collection of baskets featuring hand-blown glass accents by Palestinian architect, artist, and researcher Dima Srouji, to a jubilant collection of bamboo kites by the Dutch design collective Kite Club. They were joined by artists Nathalie Du Pasquier, Laurids Galleé, and Sisan Lee, each of whom explored the shapeshifting possibilities of this chameleonic material.

READ: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli on curating Gucci Bamboo Encounters at Fuorisalone: ‘We didn’t want to produce commodities’

‘La Prima Notte Di Quiete’ by Loro Piana and Dimoremilano

Loro Piana may have staged its design week event in the Cortile della Seta courtyard of its Milan headquarters, but there was nothing familiar about this space. Realised in collaboration with design duo Dimorestudio (founded by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci), the usually light-flooded space had been transformed into a decadent 1970s film set meets affluent Milanese penthouse accessed via a cinema foyer draped in red theatre curtains. Invited through the curtains, visitors were presented with a fully furnished home, featuring furniture designed by Dimorestudio for Loro Piana Interiors alongside exquisite vintage pieces upholstered in Loro Piana’s luxurious home textiles and art from Tornabuoni Art, Cardi Gallery, and Galleria Gracis e Secci Gallery. Immersing visitors in the space for four-minute intervals was a soundtrack curated by music composer and multimedia artist Nicola Guiducci that ranged from excerpted dialogue on a rainy evening to a phone ringing and a piano playing that both heightened the cinematic experience.

Saint Laurent’s homage to Charlotte Perriand

When it comes to the design world, Yves is never far from Saint Laurent. For its design week installation, creative director Anthony Vaccarello looked to one of the design heroes of the French fashion house’s founder, Charlotte Perriand, commissioning four pieces of furniture she conceived between 1943 to 1967 that have only existed as sketches or prototypes until now. Comprising the rosewood and cane sofa designed for the Japanese ambassador’s Paris residence in 1967; the rose and cherrywood Mille-Feuilles table that she made a reduced-scale model of in 1963; the Indochina Guest Armchair she designed for her own home in 1943; and the Rio de Janeiro bookcase she designed in 1962 for her husband Jacques Martin’s apartment, the collection has been produced in full scale for the very first time for Milan Design Week. Standing in homage to the design talents of both Perriand and Saint Laurent, each piece in the collection will be available on an exclusive made-to-order basis following the showcase.

Versace’s celebration of the ‘Art of Living’

The Versace brand may be undergoing creative changes following the announcement last month that Donatella Versace would be stepping down as creative director, but its extravagant proposition for home design remains steadfast at its Milan Design Week presentation, The Versace Art of Living. Described as a ‘universe that brings a fantasy of poise, extravagance and heritage to life’, the star of the show this season was the reinvention of the ‘Harem’ chair, its steel frame made bountiful with the addition of thick padded satin cushions and, of course, a large gold Medusa head, alongside an update the of the 1994 wooden chair the ‘Vanitas’, upholstered in velvet. The house referenced Versace’s last fashion show at the event, stating that, like its ready-to-wear offering, ‘to embody Versace is to embrace a way of living at once proudly historied and decidedly modern, and to live it – to wear it, eat from it, sit on it, sleep in it – with uncompromising intention.’

Dolce & Gabbana’s ode to ‘love and hospitality’

The master of Southern Italian charm, Dolce & Gabbana, brought the verdant coastal landscapes of its founders’ native Sicily to the northern design capital for Salone with Verde Maiolica, a porcelain service in green and white. Celebrating the handmade craftsmanship of the region, its botanical design finds its roots in the Mediterranean shrub, while the collection – comprising tea and coffee sets alongside tableware, flatware and glassware – ‘represents and narrates the tale of love and hospitality’, relayed the brand at its Via Broggi cocktail presentation.

Fendi Casa’s collaboration with Lewis Kemmenoe

Fendi Casa continued its Design Miami collaboration with British designer Lewis Kemmenoe in Milan, seeing him take over the windows of its Via Manzoni flagship with his large-scale abstract panels. Acting as a metaphor for the savoir-faire behind the Rome-based brand’s furniture, they encapsulated the duality of the new interiors collection that is at once sumptuous and minimal. New to its line-up this year was ‘Cover’ sofa, designed to be ‘dressed up or down’ – a sartorial reference to reliable wardrobe staples; the ‘Twist’ chair by Stefano Gallizioli, a wood structure upholstered in leather with armrests resembling the swirls of a ribbon; and the modular ‘Later’ sofa, designed by Ceriani Szostak and inspired by the rationalist architecture of Fendi’s iconic Rome HQ that is famously both imposing and inviting.

Issey Miyake’s ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’ lighting

Issey Miyake invited guests to its Milan flagship to unveil ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’, the fruits of its collaborative project between the Swiss design studio Atelier Oï and A-POC Able Issey Miyake, which explores the seemingly limitless possibilities of its iconic ‘A Piece of Cloth’ concept. Unveiling lighting prototypes that use one piece of wire and a piece of cloth in several formations, the house presented two distinctive series. The first, the ‘O Series’, draws inspiration from the Japanese art of Ikebana, with five sculptural lights designed to take on the same decorative presence as flower arrangements that can be easily moved around the home with the recycled polyester ‘Steam Stretch’ material used in A-POC Able’s clothes-making process appearing to blossom in spontaneous directions. The second, the ‘A Series’, pays homage to Miyake’s iconic 1997 APOC show that saw a formation of models take to the runway connected by one continuous roll of fabric. Here, a pre-knitted roll stretches out to create a three-shade interconnected light installation that can be cut to size to suit the space it is destined to take pride of place in.

READ: A-POC Able Issey Miyake’s lighting collaboration with Atelier Oï is based on its philosophy of ‘a piece of cloth’

Hermès’ brilliant white box

In a departure from the darkened rooms of recent years, Hermès turned its La Pelota venue into a brilliant-white box. ‘To design an object, to make it, a box is needed,’ visitors were told before stepping into the stark space. Designed by Charlotte Macaux Perelman, architect and artistic director of Hermès collections for the home, the cavernous box-like room presented four polyhedron shapes descending from the ceiling and emitting a fluorescent glow beneath.‘Like a sculptor's marble block, [the box] contains the object, the idea we have of it, and the dream it inspires,’ the house continued. Each of these suspended structures featured this year’s ‘Objects For The Home’, including the ‘Contrepoint Dinner Service’ by Nigel Peake and Pivot D’Hermès side table by Tomás Alonso alongside the ‘Double D’Hermès’ jugs and ‘H Partition’ throws by Studio Hermes. Positioned both inside the cavities and on cutout shelves along their surface, the intersection between an object of function and admiration was brought to the fore.

READ: A bit of all white: Hermès unveils its latest home collections in Milan

Armani Casa’s ‘Oriental Inks’

After two years of delighting Milan Design Week-goers by throwing the doors open to his historic Palazzo Orsini home on Via Borgonuovo, Giorgio Armani opted to redirect attention back to the sprawling Armani Casa flagship on Corso Venezia to mark 25 years of Armani Casa and unveil its new homewares collection, ‘Oriental Inks’. Working in collaboration with De Gournay, iconic items of furniture in the permanent Armani collection were transformed with exquisite silk and beaded embroidery and gold-leaf appliqué depicting bamboo, dragons and jungle landscapes, chosen for being ‘auspicious symbols of strength, flexibility and endurance’ designed to transport their owners – and admirers – elsewhere. The ‘Amedeo’ bed, in particular, took over 200 hours to embroider its monkey-inhabiting canopy scene. ‘The display and the new pieces, authentic examples of the highest level of craftsmanship, are visible through the windows to anyone passing by,’ shared Mr Armani. ‘I quite like the idea of a surprise that captures attention, a suggestion that broadens horizons, now that horizons are often becoming narrower.’

Loewe’s artist-designed teapots

Former Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson may have left the building, but one of his proudest legacies lives on at design week. Marking its ninth craft exhibition during the city-wide showcase, the brand presented ‘Loewe Teapots’ featuring 25 different interpretations of the ubiquitous vessel by 25 international artists and the last curation from Anderson to be presented by the Spanish house. From the coral-like glaze application of South Korean artist Jane Yang-D'Haene’s pot to the surrealist two faces of Spanish ceramicist Laia Arqueros Claramunt’s design, the collection ranged in depiction from classic ceramic to convention-defying proportions, with each piece representing the intimate ceremony in which a teapot takes the lead.

READ: 25 artists reimagine the teapot at Milan Design Week 2025

Dior expands ‘Ode to Nature’ collection with Sam Baron

Dior Maison worked with French artist Sam Baron to expand its ‘Ode To Nature’ collection with three one-metre-high glass vases that were every bit as intricate as one of the French fashion house’s couture creations. Each depicting its own garden of intertwining branches, petals and foliage, the bodies of the hand-blown and hand-constructed vessels were inspired by the first Miss Dior amphora perfume bottle from 1947. Starting as a ribbed glass tube, each was gently blown and fired over several hours to create the distinctive shape before the exacting process of applying the delicate decorative details could begin. Designed to conjure the bouquets of flowers that founder Dior insisted on having in his salon, each of the three designs is available in a limited edition of eight – Monsieur Christian Dior’s lucky number.

Stay tuned for more of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2025.

‘A piece of cloth’ is the foundational principle of Japanese label Issey Miyake, whose eponymous founder used the term to express his reverence for fabric – how a flat piece of material could be transformed into his colourful, sculptural creations through innovation and imagination. It has since spawned the acronymic A-POC Able Issey Miyake, an experimental offshoot of the label defined by inventive pattern cutting and an engagement across disciplines.

At Milan Design Week 2025, A-POC Able Issey Miyake unites with Switzerland-based architectural design studio Atelier Oï to expand the ‘a piece of cloth’ philosophy into lighting in a project titled ‘TYPE-XIII Atelier Oï’. Using wire and fabric, the collaboration – the result of a months-long exchange of conversation and ideas – sees a series of undulating table and ceiling lamps crafted from ‘a piece of wire’ and a ‘piece of cloth’.

‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï Project’ by Atelier Oï and A-POC Able Issey Miyake

The collaboration, revealed in a special installation at Issey Miyake’s Milan store, unfolds over two series: the ‘O Series’ and the ‘A Series’. The former is a series of portable lamps, developed alongside Japanese manufacturer Ambientec, whereby Atelier Oï’s oval-shaped wire frame meets a shade crafted from A-POC Able’s innovative ‘steam stretch’ fabric. By detaching the fabric shade it can be folded flat, allowing easy transportation.

Meanwhile the ‘A Series’ comprises elegant wire pendant lamps with seamless knit fabric draped and stretched over different twisting wire frames. In the experimental spirit of A-POC Able, the fabric can be cut to create different shapes, or joined together in double or triple constellations. The first release will be a prototype pendant light, created in collaboration with Spanish lighting brand Parachilna.

‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï Project’ by Atelier Oï and A-POC Able Issey Miyake will be presented at Issey Miyake’s Milan store (Via Bagutta 12, 20121 Milan) from 8 –13 April, 2025,

Salone del Mobile 2025 takes place 8-13 April. Check our full Milan Design Week 2025 guide for the must-sees.

A version of this article appears in the May 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 3 April, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Early last year, the designer Satoshi Kondo found himself in Hiroshima’s LOG hotel, cocooned in a room created almost entirely from washi, the strong, tightly woven paper that has been handcrafted in Japan since the 7th century. Situated in the foothills of the Onomichi mountains, on a trail that leads to Senkoji Temple, an ancient pilgrimage site, the hotel is located in a former 1960s apartment building renovated by Indian architecture firm Studio Mumbai. As a longtime follower of Studio Mumbai’s work and drawn by the prospect of staying inside its first project in Japan, Kondo had landed there on a pilgrimage of his own. The stay proved revelatory. ‘Everything was covered in washi, even the hanger rail and the covers for the electrical outlets,’ he smiles. ‘Studio Mumbai’s work respects the past, the history of the land, its context, but they always translate it into something contemporary, modern… something timeless.’

Studio Mumbai’s embrace of washi, used in the hotel to replicate the feeling of floating within a paper lantern (‘LOG’ stands for ‘Lantern Onomichi Garden’), is a suitable metaphor for Kondo’s role as designer of Issey Miyake’s women’s line, a position he has held since 2019. The culmination of nearly two decades of experience at the Japanese fashion label, having worked for its various subdivisions, including Pleats Please Issey Miyake and Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, since 2007, his collections concern similar acts of transformation and evolution. Namely, how do you take the pioneering, inventive joie de vivre of the brand’s namesake designer – who passed away in 2022, aged 84, after a near-five-decade career at the label he founded in 1970 – with the demands of the future?

Satoshi Kondo’s new path at Issey Miyake

In these terms, washi, on which Kondo printed his dedication to the designer at the first show after his death, held in September 2022, is symbolic. It is both an artefact of history and a blank slate for creating something new: for centuries, washi has been the canvas for intricate origami or chine-collé etchings, for screens and lamps, for bookbinding, even clothing.

Some months after his visit to LOG, on a drizzly September morning on the western outskirts of Paris, guests awaiting Kondo’s S/S 2025 show trailed into a contemporary glass-walled pavilion in the lush Parc Floral de Paris botanic garden. The unique showspace, which feels on the edge of nature and far from Paris’ urban sprawl, was without the usual white benches or ornate salon-style chairs usually present at a fashion show. Instead, guests were each assigned a stool crafted from the recycled sheets of paper used to protect garments in Issey Miyake’s heat-pressing pleating machines. A slip of traditional washi, made from hemp fibres by the Awagami factory and mill in Tokushima, explained to attendees that the show was titled ‘The Beauty of Paper’, while a poem-like accompanying blurb extolled the material’s sense of ‘timelessness’, ‘lightweight, soft and all-enveloping, sustaining everyday life since a time of distant past’.

Presented on a paper-covered runway, the collection saw Kondo and his team explore the material’s near-endless ability for transformation, creating a series of dynamic silhouettes that were either intricately folded – recalling both origami and the late Miyake’s signature ‘plissé’ knife pleats – or undulated across their surface, like a piece of paper crumpled in the hand. Other garments were crafted from a washi fabric, recalling kamiko, a craft technique that roughly translates as ‘paper cloth’. Intricate and ephemeral, kamiko was first used by Japanese Buddhist monks in the 10th century to make robes durable enough for daily wear, due to the washi paper’s tight weave. In the collection, the washi fabric was crafted using a mix of washi and wool and mohair, or nylon and polyester, preventing it from disintegrating when wet (the mix depending on the garment). Hints towards nature, like glasses adorned with verdant greenery, or bunches of flowers sticking out from brown-paper shopping bags, appeared throughout, while wrapped and looping forms had a cocooning effect. Kondo said he wanted to evoke a mood of childhood wonder; as if to press the point, models theatrically twirled and posed on the runway, like a game of dress-up.

The afternoon after the show, Kondo invited Wallpaper* inside the Rue de Richelieu showroom used by himself and the team for preparations. Despite an admission of fatigue after working through the night, the designer was energetic, speaking rapidly through a translator and shuffling through fabric samples and various squares of washi, while vigorously demonstrating the way the collection’s garments can adapt to the wearer’s body through their intricate twists and folds. The wave-like construction of several of the garments (some appeared almost dampened with water) was the result of visits to washi factories, which are often located next to rivers due to the amount of water used in the process. ‘It’s a water-intensive craft, the water is always running. There’s always this beautiful river, and along that river is nature, light.’ It all lends washi an evocative quality: ‘Washi’s really textural, it’s comforting. There’s something psychological about it – emotional, even.’

Kondo was born in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient former capital, which is often seen as the country’s centre of craft and making. His mother was a dressmaking teacher; he remembers the whir of her sewing machine and the sheets of pattern paper that were scattered about his childhood home. ‘I think most Japanese children grew up playing with folding paper. For the team, a lot of memories came back working on this collection,’ he says, continually referencing his ‘genius’ pattern cutters and craftspeople, who were responsible for the way this simple childhood act was replicated in the collection through deceptively complex techniques (the minimal use of cutting, the lack of seams, knitting from a single yarn).

Much of this work is not specific to a collection; rather, the various innovations dreamt up by his team are part of an ongoing enquiry into the potential of fabric, one which began with Miyake himself. ‘It’s a continual process,’ he says, observing that often ideas will be put on hold until the next season when there is time to complete them properly. Working this way, it’s sometimes hard for Kondo to decide when one collection is finished and the next begins. ‘I’d love to be free of the cycle of fashion and just go on and on with an idea.’ Instead, the decision is deferred to his team. ‘I just ask one of my team, can we do this? If the feedback is not so positive, then I know it’s a good point to pause.’

What it comes down to, he says, is ‘retaining the integrity of a piece of fabric’. This is a particularly Miyakean response. The late Hiroshima-born designer, who showed his first collection in New York in 1971, would always return to the idea of ‘a piece of cloth’, a statement that spoke of the centrality of fabric to Issey Miyake (the 1998 diffusion line, A-POC, takes its name from the concept). Even his wildest creations – dresses in the shape of bouncing saucer-like orbs, windmill-like headpieces, garments that linked one model to another – came down to the simple interplay between the fabric and the body, inspired in part by traditional Japanese dressing rituals. ‘The body, the fabric covering it, and a comfortable relationship between the two,’ he would describe as the nexus of his work, which was underpinned by a feeling of pragmatism – these were clothes not simply to marvel at but to wear (as such, he always described himself as a ‘clothing’ rather than ‘fashion’ designer).

In early 2024, Kondo presented an A/W 2024 collection titled ‘What Has Always Been’, which explored the primal desire to wrap the body with cloth, whether for warmth or decoration. According to Kondo, ‘the origin of clothing is the fact that there’s always a human body and there’s a piece of cloth. It’s an essential act, and the most beautiful thing in the world.’ It made for a bold, intuitive collection, which he described as both ‘spontaneous and deliberate’; a nod to Issey Miyake’s legacy but not trapped by it. Critics noted a growing momentum from the label, with Kondo himself unafraid to create clothing on his own terms rather than basking in past glories.

‘Miyake was never guided by trends from the wider industry,’ says Kondo. ‘There was always a story to tell, and that story was original. We’ve continued a creative process that doesn’t allow too much influence from the outside. Miyake was tenacious and stubborn. It’s something that echoes with me, too – that tenacity, that perseverance. He continued until he found something really original. It’s a mindset. When you want a really beautiful flower, you don’t go to the florist, you go out into the forest.’ 

Model: Abuk Adeer at The Society. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Kabuto Okuzawa at WSM using Oribe. Make-up: Akiko Owada at The Wall Group using Chanel Beauty. Photography assistant: Jake Holler. Special thanks to: Far-Near Studio, Arlington Garrett and Neil Nanda at Color Resource Center.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

As usual, our biannual Wallpaper* Style Issue reflects the changing fashion seasons. Rather less usually, this March 2025 edition arrives at a moment of relative upheaval within the industry, with close to a dozen creative directors on manoeuvres. Given that this list includes the likes of Sarah Burton, Matthieu Blazy and Haider Ackermann, it’s fair to say that something more involving than the industry-standard ‘musical chairs’ is underway.

Meanwhile, something akin to fashion’s tectonic plates is in motion, ushering in a more liberated, less prescriptive view of what a collection can be. Fashion features editor Jack Moss first identified the shift at Prada, where, he writes, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons chose to operate ‘more like an open-ended invitation: who do you want to be today? “Infinite options proffer infinite opportunities,” said the house. These options comprised 49 entirely different looks to choose from; a collage of elements with barely a garment or idea repeated.’

This disavowal of the traditional ‘convening power’ of a collection, unless defined by its very disparity, inspired Jack and fashion & creative director Jason Hughes to explore further examples of this new, more eclectic mood. They found it in the work of Satoshi Kondo at Issey Miyake, Francesco Risso at Marni – whose S/S 2025 collection once again celebrated the house’s individuality – and Rei Kawakubo’s characteristic perfume provocations at Comme des Garçons.

Elsewhere, we conjure with the spirit of self-expression that resides in the work of fashion designer-turned-jeweller Gabrielle Greiss; Eva Gödel, whose model agency Tomorrow Is Another Day is changing the mores of the runway; and the founders of Furu, the project management agency that is turning to architecture in the stark surroundings of the Swedish island of Gotland. Going your own way never felt less fanciful, more freeing, so now.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The March 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 6 February 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

In the summer of 1977, seven years after founding his namesake label, the Japanese designer Issey Miyake staged a runway show in Tokyo and Kyoto titled ‘Fly with Issey Miyake’. Held on a cross-shaped stage, models wore pieces from the designer’s A/W 1977 collection while brandishing parachute-like pieces of fabric in Miyake’s bold, liberated prints. Shown over five performances a day, 22,000 people would view the spectacle, which was part of a collaboration with Japanese department store Parco. ‘It is legendary among Issey Miyake staff,’ says designer Sen Kawahara, one-third of the trio behind IM Men, an offshoot of the Miyake Design Studio which launched in 2021 (his co-designers are Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi).

Inside the debut of Issey Miyake’s IM Men

Kawahara is speaking at a preview of IM Men’s A/W 2025 collection, which was shown as part of Paris Fashion Week Men’s earlier today (23 January 2025). Marking the label’s debut show in Paris, IM Men will replace Issey Miyake Homme Plissé – another one of the roster of brands under the Miyake Design Studio umbrella – on the menswear schedule (‘we have made new plans for Homme Plissé as it moves forward and continues to evolve,’ read a recent statement from the brand). Already popular in Japan, and now available in a number of international Issey Miyake stores, IM Men looks primed to step into the spotlight. ‘I wanted to take what Issey Miyake was doing with his women’s line, and inherit that, and move it into the future,’ says Kawahara of the label, which remains bound by ‘the philosophy of a piece of cloth’ – the same philosophy at centre of Miyake’s fabric-first approach.

The A/W 2025 collection, presented this morning at former convent Le Réfectoire des Cordeliers, is titled ‘Fly with IM Men’, a reference to the 1977 show. Kawahara says he and his co-designers were thinking about the idea of a piece of fabric floating in the wind: ‘whenever looking at a piece of cloth, one finds unbounded creativity, manifested within the unfilled space, transforming and ready to take flight,’ read the collection notes. ‘We wanted to go back to the beginning, to go back to something simple and beautiful,’ says Kawahara, of why the opening section of the show featured monochromatic looks. ‘I visualised piece of cloth, flying away. The first colour I thought of was white.’

Indeed, the idea of simplicity runs through IM Men’s output, which often sees garments constructed from a single square of fabric which, when folded into place with poppers, buttons or zips, becomes a jacket, shirt or coat, in increasingly complex ways. In this collection, there is a metallic ultrasuede bomber which appears like a leather jacket and yet can be folded entirely flat when the zips are undone (the same goes for a more voluminous coat, cut from perforated ultrasuede, which here is 100 per cent plant-based in an innovation developed by Toray Industries, Inc which uses sugar molasses and cornstarch). Itakura, after demonstrating these magic-trick-like pieces prior to the show, says that working this way – a nod to Miyake’s ‘a piece of cloth’, which prizes fabric above all else – is enjoyable in its strictures. ‘[We enjoy] the challenge of how flat pieces can be made into shapes on the body,’ he says. ‘Everything comes back to this idea of something having to come out of a piece of cloth. That’s the way we want to work.’

In the show itself, which was presented on an optic-white runway, cleverly layered and draped looks – some looped around the head in monastic fashion – appeared in a kaleidoscopic palette of colours, with bold hues of green, purple and yellow. At the show’s close, models undid the garments they were wearing until they were a single square of material, before brandishing them like flags and dashing along the runway. The show was backdropped by an installation by Japanese artist and designer Tokujin Yoshioka, featuring enormous black squares moved around by a series of robotic arms.

After the show, the Le Réfectoire des Cordeliers show space will transform into an exhibition, providing a closer look at the ‘design and engineering’ behind five of the collection’s innovations. The idea is ‘to explore the possibilities of a piece of cloth to its furthest limits,’ say the designers. ‘We hope this exhibition provides an opportunity for audiences not only in fashion, but also in other creative fields and beyond, to encourage dialogues across disciplines.’ Much of the exhibition will centre around the processes behind the pieces, says Kawahara, the complexity of their construction sometimes difficult to communicate to consumers. ‘We aren’t able to explain it personally to people, so here, we wanted to show it.’

‘Fly with IM Men’ runs from 24-26 January 2025 at Le Réfectoire des Cordeliers in Paris.

isseymiyake.com

Last June, British designer Craig Green opened up his London studio to show his latest collection after a two-year absence from the runway. He admitted that such an intimate show was scary – ‘It’s like someone painting a runway through your house,’ he said – but it also felt liberating. Here was the site of Green’s fashion experiments, a creative lab of endless enquiries into fabric and material; all that intricately moulded leather, the glimmering candy wrapper-like fabrics, or the various constructions designed to hang off the body like contemporary sculpture. In the past decade, these have evoked sails and lilos, medical equipment and horse-riding stirrups, even contorted dummies used for martial arts practice.

For this show, his S/S 2025 offering, Green felt like a designer in full flight, riffing on archetypal menswear garments in imaginative style: a series of ‘biker jackets’ were made in collaboration with Danish leather brand Ecco and constructed in colourful jigsaw puzzle-like layers of ‘shooting and protective patches’. The resulting pieces were strange and seductive, the result of hours of experimentation and meticulous assembly. ‘The childish idea of taking an engine apart to see how it works,’ Green said of his process, which is one of enquiry and curiosity. Walking back out of his studio into London’s Docklands – currently in its own state of reinvention, surrounded by looming cranes and construction sites – the excitement for his return was palpable.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: the fashion winners

Indeed, the show spoke to a wider mood in fashion, whereby its most intriguing designers are eschewing the pedestrian in favour of experimentation and high-minded design. It is a riposte, no doubt, to the so-called era of ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘stealth wealth’ – that post-pandemic moment of stratospherically expensive cashmere sweaters and swaddling silhouettes – and a response to the frenetic, tremulous times in which we live. The resulting collections spanned the thrilling (John Galliano’s triumphant Artisanal show for Maison Margiela), the unexpected (Rick Owens’ 200-strong old Hollywood epic featuring his parading white-clad ‘army of love’) and those that mined a feeling of childlike wonder, like Matthieu Blazy’s colourful S/S 2025 outing at Bottega Veneta, which took place amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. ‘I wanted to feel the primal pull of fashion once more,’ said the designer. ‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing: the power of wow.’

Our Design Award winners – which include Green’s ‘biker jacket’ and a purposely crumpled overcoat from Blazy – were also chosen for their wow factor. Transcending the everyday, they are clever, sculptural, sometimes weird; each relies on process, craft and construction. When selecting the pieces, we were in part led by the thinking behind Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Prada, which the designers described as a rallying call against the internet algorithm; the way it silos us into bubbles, smoothing our tastes towards pure hegemony (‘we like things because people tell us to like them,’ said Mrs Prada backstage). Instead, they wanted to create a collection that rejected the ‘derivative and expected’ through 49 unique looks, a riot of colour and silhouette. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

We’ve also rejected the derivative and expected. We were seduced by the work of Duran Lantink and Ellen Hodakova Larsson, both awarded at the 2024 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers for their distinct viewpoints. The work of the Dutch-born Lantink – with its smooth, bulbous protrusions, like inflatables have been snuck under the surface of his garments – is bold and challenging in the way it transforms the body but remains rooted in everyday garments. He is confident that he will see them worn on the street (and his growing stockist list seems to agree). Swedish designer Larsson works with deadstock garments, turning the earnest connotations of upcycling on their head and conjuring up a surreal glamour with pieces made from discarded objects (we chose a dress made from stitched-together faux fur hats).

Other winners include Francesco Risso’s S/S25 collection for Marni, which reimagines elegant midcentury silhouettes in paper-like fabrics evoking fur and feathers, as if twisted fashion illustrations come to life. Like Blazy, it spoke of a primal desire to dress up and play, and was one of our highlights of the season. Another was Nicolas Ghesquière’s show for Louis Vuitton, which kicked off with a runway, formed from the house’s trunks, rising from the floor, its liberated mood reminiscent of high-voltage 1980s shows. The collection riffed on the same era: bold wide-shouldered jackets, flourishes of tulle, pirate-style pants, and a vibrant mash-up of print and adornment. Or the one-legged trousers, featured here, which loop cleverly around the lower body and introduce an intriguing new silhouette.

Construction is always on the mind of Satoshi Kondo, who is leading Issey Miyake into exciting new realms while retaining the pioneering spirit of the house’s namesake. This season, he looked to washi, inspired by the traditional handmade Japanese paper’s ability to fold and be shaped that reminded him of playing with origami sheets as a child (the dress we chose, with its undulating silhouette, recalls crumpled paper). Victoria Beckham’s collections also saw her experiment with forms, including a dress that saw fabric laid over twisting, wire-like rods. It’s exciting to see a designer refusing to rest on their laurels or take the easy route.

It has undoubtedly been Jonathan Anderson’s year, though. At both Loewe and his eponymous label JW Anderson, he proved his ability to shift the eye, to endlessly interrogate the way that we wear and perceive clothing. His S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Loewe featured featherweight dresses crafted over bouncing cage-like constructions, the delicate wires intricately welded together by hand, alongside elongated dress shoes, and feather T-shirts hand-painted with the work of Van Gogh and Manet, a play on ‘band merch’.

At JW Anderson, he said he wanted to intuit ‘where the next decade is going’, with a purposely reduced collection of sharply flared skirts and garments printed with extracts from an essay by British art critic and Bloomsbury Group member, Clive Bell. Anderson explained post-show that it explores ‘the idea of art and design and how they sit together’, though he elaborated that he was less interested in the essay’s content and more in ‘the modernity of text on a white page’. ‘There needs to be a narrowing of things,’ he continued. ‘[This collection] is about the idea of taking a blank page and starting afresh.’ For Anderson – and indeed the rest of the designers assembled here – the possibility of that blank white page seems endless. The question is, where next?

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Awek Gak Chol at Titanium Management, Arthur Del Beato at Milk Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM Hair: Tobia Bartolini using Oribe. Make-up: Michelle Dacillo at Agency 41 using Laneige. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Boy de Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistant: Michel Bewley Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Archie Thomson. Digi tech: Alexander Brunacci.

Just before men’s fashion month began this past June, Meta introduced a new tag for Instagram and Facebook allowing you to label images ‘made with AI’. It was a response, no doubt, to the bizarre ‘AI art’ which flooded the latter: anthropomorphic animals that move like humans; statues of Jesus made of stacks of shrimps or vegetables; ‘cyborg’ children engineered with empty plastic bottles and computer detritus. They have been deemed ‘slop’: a queasy and surreal stream of images made by a mysterious army of bots to mine likes and views (search: ‘weird AI art Facebook’ on Google Images to view some of these oddities).

Later that month at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a menswear collection which the duo said explored ideas of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’. It made for a collection of illusions: belts that looked like belts but were actually stitched into the construction of a trouser, shirts that were warped with hidden wires, shield-like sunglasses overlaid with images of Roman statues, ravers and American highways. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was fashion for our bewildering post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Throughout 2024, designers have used their collections to grapple with designing for our increasingly disorientating world, resulting in idiosyncratic and intriguing collections which British designer Jonathan Anderson best described as ‘irrational clothing’ (he was talking about his own S/S 2025 menswear collection). The idea of the hybrid ran throughout, strange mash-ups that seemed to capture the dizzying spin of a social-media stream: at Loewe and Balenciaga garments appeared crafted from stacks of discarded clothing, at Sacai garments like the MA-1 flight jacket were melded together in Chitose Abe’s offbeat style, while at Issey Miyake sweaters appeared stitched on to the front of vests (typical of the Japanese brand’s innovative approach, they were actually knitted as a single piece).

Though it was accessories that made for some of the most curious hybrids. There was JW Anderson’s loafer bag, first appearing as part of Anderson’s S/S 2025 menswear collection in Milan, which ‘deconstructed and reconstructed in bag form’ the penny loafer (the classic shoe’s ‘whale-tail keeper’ detail runs across the bag’s boxy design, while the base recalls a loafer’s sole). Part of a collecton that was inspired by the stream of memories dug up by hypnotherapy – sweaters ran with slogans like ‘Real Sleep’ – it was both strange and familiar, like an object appearing from a dream. And, judging by a buzzy release last month, it looks set to follow in the JW Anderson ‘Bumper’ bag’s footsteps as a contemporary it-bag.

At Hodakova, the Stockholm-based winner of the 2024 LVMH Prize, eponymous designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson uses deadstock in imaginative ways. Like a series of bags constructed from discarded belts, or a surreal bag crafted from a knee-high boot, capturing an undone glamour that feels fitting for our times. At Duran Lantink’s thrilling S/S 2025 show, handbags became hats, while at Acne Studios trompe l’oeil prints saw ‘denim jeans’ printed across silk scarves and tote bags. Demna, meanwhile, melded a soft satin house slipper with towering stiletto heel at Balenciaga, while at Bottega Veneta, what appeared like a knitted wool sock was actually a woven leather shoe. Off the runway, New Balance’s loafer-cum-trainer was one of the year’s most divisive (and talked about) shoes.

These were pieces that spoke of not only the experience of living in what feels like an endless, infinite scroll of a social media stream – the dizzying juxtapositions from one post to the next – but also a newly experimental attitude in fashion as designers shift away from the quiet to the loud, no doubt buoyed by a new generation of consumers willing to make bolder statements with the clothes they wear. Indeed Anderson said his S/S 2025 collection had partly been inspired by seeing young people experiment with their outfits when he had attended Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier that year. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said post show. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Hybrid accessories: the Wallpaper* edit

Earlier this year, Jonathan Anderson described his S/S 2025 menswear collection as one of ‘irrational clothing’ – an embrace of the strange and the unexpected, inspired by the experimental attitude towards dressing he had witnessed among young people at Primavera Festival in Barcelona earlier that summer. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said at the time. ‘The eye has changed.... people want something that is really challenging.’

Anderson is astute with a soundbite, and the idea of ‘irrational clothing’ could equally have been applied to the womenswear collections shown this past month in New York, London, Milan and Paris. By and large, there was a marked disavowal of ‘quiet luxury’, seeing restraint thrown out the window in the pursuit of the bold and eclectic. If sometimes this led to a lack of cohesion – with designers seeming to ricochet between ideas – when it was done well, it made for some enlivening fashion moments. Such was the case at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a freewheeling collection that paid homage to individual style, traversing Prada eras and comprising 49 near-completely different looks filled with colour, texture and shifting silhouettes. A similarly eclectic approach provided transporting collections from Valentino, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Louis Vuitton, which were among the highlights of the season.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the S/S 2025 womenswear shows, from an embrace of the eclectic to a new mood in tailoring, and clothing where nothing was quite what it seemed.

The season was an homage to individual style

A Prada show is usually a barometer for the season, such is the knack that Miuccia Prada has for shifting the fashion needle, reimagining the familiar in oftentimes electrifying new ways (now, she does so alongside Raf Simons, her co-creative director and another fashion soothsayer). For S/S 2025, a radical new proposition from the pair: the decision to do away with trends or thematics entirely, choosing instead to present a freewheeling and eclectic collection that celebrated individual style. It was a riposte, said Mrs Prada backstage, to the way that the social-media algorithm smooths personal style and siloes us into social-media echo chambers. ‘We are driven by algorithms,’ she said. ‘We like things because people tell us to like them.’ As such, the pair spoke about rejecting the ‘derivative and expected’ for a stream of 49 near-entirely different looks that veered between sculptural high-shine silver skirts dotted with enormous eyelets, leather dresses with BDSM hooks and elements of trompe l’oeil (there were also feathers, bug-like sunglasses, and day-glo anoraks). It made for an enticing visual feast, ‘a Prada for each individual’. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

Also in Milan, Matthieu Blazy struck a similar mood at Bottega Veneta, which he described as an attempt to evoke a sense of childhood wonder (as such, the animal-shaped beanbag chairs were a reference to the scene in E.T. when the title character hides amid a closet full of cuddly toys). Blazy said that the collection began by thinking about a suited businessman taking his child to school while carrying their pink cartoon rucksack or lunchbox over his shoulder. The collection was full of such juxtapositions, seeing ‘Italian sartorialism’ clashed with playful flourishes, from tasselled wigs to blown-up tailoring and animal motifs. Like at Prada, barely two looks were the same, and it was a definitive statement that luxury fashion needn’t be discreet nor restrained – rather, it should spark joy. ‘[This collection] encompasses the joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ the designer said. ‘Last season was maybe more contemplative. But at the same time, we need beauty. We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’ In Paris, Nicolas Ghesquière felt similarly liberated – his 1980s-infused collection seemed to recall the flamboyant, individual style of the New Romantics, albeit with the designer’s always-futuristic sheen – while Alessandro Michele opened his tenure at Valentino with a musing on beauty that was as richly expansive as his collections for Gucci (he left the Italian house in 2022). Over the collection’s mammoth 85 looks were hundreds of elements, among them ruffles, feathers, polka dots, floral motifs, wide-brimmed hats, facial piercings, ladylike handbags (sometimes worn two-a-piece) and ribbon-tied pumps. Again as at Prada, it was a bold invitation to experiment with clothing – a maxim that defined the season.

Designers reimagined the everyday

Despite its more dramatic flourishes, Blazy’s latest collection for Bottega Veneta was rooted in the idea of everyday style (‘everyday adventures’, is how he described the collection’s mood). As such, objects like the plastic corner-shop bag – here recreated in heat-pressed nylon – were elevated onto the runway, alongside bunches of flowers (woven from leather), brown paper bags (more leather), and shopping baskets (also leather). Such transformations were also applied to clothing: this season, he continued to riff on everyday garments like jeans, crumpled T-shirts and corporate tailoring, albeit in luxurious style. ‘I was interested in the simple acts of fashion that happen everyday,’ said Blazy. Demna, creative director of Balenciaga, is also known for taking disparate objects – like crisp packets, toolboxes and rubbish sacks – and turning them into fashion accessories. This season, though, Demna looked towards archetypal garments, like denim jeans, and radically altered their proportions (his version sat perilously low on the waist). Elsewhere, dresses looked as if a classic trench coat had been tied around the body, while padded jackets were reshaped to recall Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ‘cocoon’ silhouette.

At Issey Miyake, models carried shopping-style bags filled with bunches of flowers, as if on a trounce to the market, while Anderson’s latest Loewe show featured feathered T-shirts handpainted with works by Vincent Van Gogh, including Irises and Sunflowers. Reflecting the designer’s idiosyncratic approach, these were not inspired by encountering the paintings in a gallery, but by the reproductions he sees on tea towels and T-shirts while driving to work each day past the tourist markets that line the River Seine. ‘We get so used to them that they become a kind of high-low culture,’ he said, placing what he called the ‘burned-out’ images in a new context as an attempt to shift the eye. ‘[They are artworks] we are always magnetically drawn to... There’s something that we want to be part of, something, even if we don't understand it.’ The same can be said for Anderson’s collections for Loewe, which continue to intrigue.

There was a tailoring redux

Backstage after that show for Loewe, Anderson touched on the evolution of tailoring at the house during his tenure. ‘Historically, tailoring was something Loewe wasn’t good at for a long time, but I think we’ve been able to do it right, and come up with a kind of signature,’ he said. ‘Tailoring is about the subtlety of the change, and it’s taken me years to understand that.’ His proposition here was a tailored jacket with long, gently flared sleeves and baggy trousers that twisted cleverly towards the waistline. The result was roomy and generous, though the silhouette – a move from a relatively narrow shoulder line towards the more voluminous weight of the trouser – was one of louche elegance. It was proof that tailoring remains fertile ground for designers, something Simon Chilvers discussed in the September Style Issue of Wallpaper*, in regards to men’s tailoring. Womenswear, if anything, allows for even more sartorial experimentation, unrestrained by the still-conservative mores of men’s suiting.

Such experiments were in evidence across the various cities: in Paris, Victoria Beckham turned blazers inside out or sliced tailored trousers down the leg to expose the pocket lining, while another trouser shape sat away from the waistline through clever use of corsetry (in New York, Tory Burch evoked a similar effect on skirts). At Dolce & Gabbana in Milan, jackets were inserted with a Jean Paul Gaultier-inspired ‘cone-bra’ (an ode to Madonna, who sat front row and inspired the collection), while at Emporio Armani, the designer revived his 1980s suit and tie for women with a multitude of iterations of the blazer, including those folded sharply along their front. At Seán McGirr’s sophomore show for McQueen, jackets were cut to evoke the feeling that they were being grasped close by their wearer to protect them against the elements. Though perhaps the most seductive proposition for this season’s tailoring was that at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello revived the languid, broad-shouldered tailoring of his menswear collection earlier this year – which was no doubt was inspired by Mr Armani’s tailoring of the 1980s – to evoke the wardrobe of Yves Saint Laurent himself, from a fluid black tuxedo (modelled by Bella Hadid who also wore the couturier’s famous thick-rimmed glasses) to beige and grey double-breasted tailoring.

American fashion was dissected

On the final Tuesday of New York Fashion Week was the first – and perhaps only – television debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Such was the anticipation there were fears that Luar’s runway show, due to take place that evening, would be underattended (it wasn’t: Madonna even made a rare front-row appearance), while those already travelling to London for the next fashion week leg made complicated plans to watch the debate while in the air (they managed, thanks to a BBC iPlayer live stream and aeroplane wifi). Which is to say, the upcoming election loomed large in New York, prompting a dissection of American fashion and what it represents – or what it could represent. Such was the case at Willy Chavarria’s latest show, which saw the designer present an homage to America’s immigrant communities, like those he grew up around in his home city of Fresno, California (Chavarria is the child of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father). He did so through riffs on uniforms: hotel managers, farm workers, and employees at electronics chain Circuit City, albeit in his distinct style, which instils a mood of elegance through abundant silhouettes and references to haute couture. ‘Given the time that we’re in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine a light on the people who make this country work,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘It’s about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Afterwards, guests were given a sticker to remind them to vote.

Other designers looked towards the history of American fashion: Tory Burch continued to reference figures like Claire McCardell, a pioneer of American sportswear, as inspiration for her breezy summer collection, while Tommy Hilfiger drafted Wu-Tang Clan to perform at his latest show, a reminder of the longtime synergy between his namesake label and hip hop music (the show took place on a former Staten Island ferry owned by the comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost). Sometimes it took an outsider’s eye: against the backdrop of the gleaming New York skyline in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Off-White creative director Ib Kamara staged his debut show in the city, in part an ode to founder Virgil Abloh’s American heritage. It made for a vivid, continent-swapping collection from the Sierre Leone-born designer, which celebrated America as a cultural melting pot. ‘I have vivid memories of what America, and New York in particular, represented in the collective imagination of Africans: a dreamland of utopias made real, a place of opportunities,’ he said. Also making his debut in New York was Belgian designer Pieter Mulier, who showed his latest collection for Alaïa in the dramatic spiralling atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, swapping from Paris for the season. Conjuring the easy glamour of figures like Charles James, Adrian and Halston, as well as McCardell, it was an exemplary collection that showed the rich potential American fashion history still holds for contemporary designers (it was a show that felt like it had been percolating since his exit from American powerhouse Calvin Klein, where he worked alongside Raf Simons, in 2018). ‘[This collection] is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris – of the body in motion, liberated,’ Mulier said. ‘As Alaïa always has been.’

Sometimes things weren’t what they seemed

Balenciaga’s S/S 2025 show began with what appeared to be lingerie, though on closer inspection was actually a series of nude bodysuits embroidered with bras, knickers and stockings for a playful visual trick. It captured a mood of disorientation which ran through the season, reflecting the menswear shows earlier this year. Back then, Anderson spoke about ‘things not being what they seem’ in his JW Anderson collection (inspired by the experience of hypnotherapy dredging up past memories), while at Prada the designers spoke about the idea of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’, a response, they said, to a world where these categories feel increasingly blurred. As such, the technique of trompe l’oeil – the illusion of one garment imprinted onto another – continued to be evoked by designers across women’s fashion month, from JW Anderson’s mini dresses decorated with faux buttons and zips, to printed fur collars and belts in-set into trousers at Prada. Meanwhile, at Moschino, simple white-cotton garments adorned with childlike impressions of trench coats and sailor’s scarves. A similarly illusory mood was conjured in pieces that appeared to have a life of their own – or, indeed lived a life already – whether purposely creased garments at Ferragamo, Bottega Veneta or Victoria Beckham, or dresses at Prada constructed with twisting wired seams. Set into skewiff proportions, they appeared to be leaping off the models’ bodies.

Revisit our coverage of New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks.

Salt – evoked as a dialogue between earth and sea – is the creative starting point for Le Sel d’Issey, a new men’s fragrance launched by Issey Miyake this week in Tokyo.

The fragrance comes to life 30 years after Issey Miyake’s L’Eau d’Issey Pour Homme was released, an iconic water-inspired scent, whose minimalist form and fresh notes seduced a generation of wearers and left a deep imprint on the perfume world.

The new scent Le Sel d’Issey follows in the nature-rooted footsteps of its predecessor, reimagining the power of salt in an olfactory expression designed to ‘awaken the senses and stimulate energy’.

A sense of salt infuses the aroma – fresh and uplifting with a hint of sea – with layers of ingredients from both land and ocean (seaweed extract, natural ginger, vetiver), harmonised to create an alchemic ‘pulsation’ on the skin throughout the day.

The energy of salt also imbues the bottle, with its pure clear form fusing transparent glass, sharply lined chrome and refracted light, as dreamt up by Japanese artist Tokujin Yoshioka, a longtime Issey Miyake collaborator (behind the brand’s Issey Miyake Ginza / 442 store, for example, which opened in 2023).

The transparent bottle, gently elliptical and softly edged when held in the hands, is hewn from 20 per cent recycled glass, with a concave space inside its solid clear base creating dynamic lines that infuse its minimalist form with scattered shafts of light.

The atmosphere of movement is amplified by the clean-cut reflective surface of its solid chrome metal cap, while the minimalist paper packaging is crafted from 10 per cent upcycled seaweed, its matte texture evoking a sense of salt.

‘I wanted it to feel sacred’: Tokujin Yoshioka on Le Sel d’Issey’s bottle design

For Yoshioka, the starting point was the ‘energy’ of salt, which he aimed to evoke through a visual expression of ‘pure radiance’ and a ‘sense of light’. Speaking to Wallpaper* in Tokyo, he explains: ‘This was the last project Mr Miyake asked me to do during a phone call in 2022. I remember vividly the launch of L’Eau d'Issey. It had big impact on me. It felt like something very different, more Japanese than European.

‘This time, I wanted to create something very simple and very pure. I also wanted it to feel sacred – something that gives you energy when you wear it.’

Salt – known as shio in Japanese – is deeply steeped in the sacred in Japan, symbolising a sense of purification, often offered to gods in Shinto shrine rituals, sprinkled in sumo wrestling rings and placed on small dishes by doorways.

‘When Mr Miyake gave me the theme of salt, I thought a lot about what this means,’ Yoshioka explains. ‘It has slightly different meanings around the world. Salt for Japanese people is very sacred. It’s used in Shinto shrine purifications and to ward off bad spirits. But in a more universal context, salt is also an essential element to human life and also to the earth.’

Describing the play of transparency and light in the oval glass bottle, he adds: ‘I decided not to create a concrete shape of salt, this is more about the senses and inspiration. It’s an energy and a force, like salt itself. This is what I was trying to create and evoke.’

The fragrance itself, brought to life by Paris-based Beauté Prestige International, defies the challenge of salt being scentless through a careful harmony of natural notes from both land and ocean.

Perfumer Quentin Bisch explains: ‘I wanted to create the scent of the exact moment the waves roll back, transitioning between the earth and sea. Salt is the memory left behind by a wave on the earth and on the skin, almost like an imprint.’

Key to its composition is laminaria seaweed extract evoking a fresh marine edge, layered with the earthy wooden notes of oakmoss, vetiver and cedar alongside uplifting natural ginger.

‘Salt doesn’t have any smell,’ Christophe Venot, global fragrance brand director at Beauté Prestige International, tells Wallpaper*. ‘The seaweed is a natural extract from France and you need something like this to instantly convey the idea of salt. It creates an oceanic note.

‘Then we have the oakmoss, vetiver and cedar creating a vibrant earthy cocktail. Ginger brings energy, lifting everything, and the seaweed twists it all together. Plus on the top, a bit of saffron and musk.

‘This all creates a real pulsation. You spray it on your skin and imagine it will decrease in intensity but it doesn’t. It pulsates in waves all day long, in cycles of energy, softness, salt. That is the magic of the formula.’

‘Issey Miyake Le Sel d’Issey: Imagination of Salt’ at 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo

The new scent officially launched at gallery 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo, alongside the exhibition ‘Issey Miyake Le Sel d’Issey: Imagination of Salt’, with installations also designed by Yoshioka.

Here, in the angular minimalist confines of the Tadao Ando-designed gallery space, a scattering of circular metallic stands displayed the new perfume bottle alongside sculptural raw salt rocks.

Clear spherical lids on the stands could also be lifted, allowing visitors to inhale the new scent, while a cymatics-inspired campaign film by Marcus Tomlinson, exploring the visual expression of sound waves, unfolded dynamically on a nearby wall.

Just outside the gallery, rolling cloud-like waves of mist rose into the sky every few minutes from a long low-lying white wall created by Yoshioka, gently releasing the aroma of Le Sel d’Issey into the air.

‘Many years ago, I predicted that people would go beyond the design of forms towards the invisible,’ says the artist. ‘In our digitalised world, form is not the most important theme – what people are looking for is something that goes behind our senses. It’s about memory, experience, time – and how we can design and create these.’

He adds: ‘When I smelled this scent for the first time, I immediately thought of umi – the sea. I could feel the strength, warmth and kindness of the sea. It felt like the energy of nature. I hope that the experience of this scent will create new memories for people.’

The presence of the late Miyake lingered tangibly at the Tokyo launch, living on through the expression of his passion for salt in the new scent. Midori Kitamura, the chairman of Miyake Design Studio, says: ‘I have worked for the creation of Mr Miyake for over 50 years. Since the 1980s, I have also been involved in the fragrance development.

‘As I wrote in our recent book [Issey Miyake: 1960 to 2022], Mr Miyake expressed about all of his creations, not only clothes but also fragrance, as follows: “I believe there is hope in design. Design evokes surprise and joy in people.” Based on this concept, we will continue to pursue such fragrance that has timeless value and is unseen before.‘

isseymiyakeparfums.com

Le Sel d’Issey by Issey Miyake is also available from online stockists including theperfumeshop.com

‘Issey Miyake Le Sel d’Issey: Imagination of Salt’ runs at 21_21 Design Sight until 8 September 2024, 2121designsight.jp

Soft curves, streamlined silhouettes and sleek fabrics: the A/W 2024 menswear collections were imbued with a new flamboyance, seeing classic ensembles reimagined with a sense of panache and performance.

There was Loewe, where creative director Jonathan Anderson looked towards the ‘iconography’ of Hollywood and the ‘collaged realness’ of social media with a collection adorned with theatrical flourishes. This included bows and beads alongside the delirious illustrations of Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins (‘it’s all about different types of validation… how we perceive ourselves to the outside world,’ said Anderson at the time).

At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello proposed louche, oversized tailoring and outerwear which recalled the 1980s silhouettes of American Gigolo. ‘Fluid, with an intentional slouch, an illusion of fabric turning liquid,’ said the designer. Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana’s latest menswear offering was titled ‘Sleek’: a ‘story of elegance and handmade… a sartorial essay,’ described Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of the largely black collection, which demonstrated their tailoring prowess.

Here, taken from the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographer Matthieu Delbreuve and fashion editor David St John James put a series of these menswear looks centre stage in a series titled ‘Quiet on Set’.

Model: Indy van Opstal at Ford Models Paris. Casting: Svea Casting. Grooming: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Sunday Riley and Sisley. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistant: Kevin Ramos. Fashion assistant: Olivia Meghan. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Production assistant: Minna Vauhkonen.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

As seen in the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* – a reflection on a season defined by tactility, texture and touch – 12 of A/W 2024’s defining men’s and womenswear moments, from scrunched-up Miu Miu gloves and decadent Ferragamo feathers to seductive leather ties and cocooning balaclavas.

Soft touch (top left)

Enveloping textures, the pleasure of clothing on the skin: this season is all about tactility. Cue a melange of furry, fuzzy, soft-to-the-touch textures – whether the teddy-bear feel of a Dries Van Noten bag or the fluffy finish of a Carven skirt.

Match point (top right)

This season saw designers explore the co-ordinating accessory, albeit in an unexpected manner – at Gucci, the tone of a leather glove met that of a handbag, part of Sabato De Sarno’s ongoing investigation of colour and texture.

Parallel lines

The stripe is one of Missoni’s enduring motifs, often appearing in vivid colour combinations. Designer Filippo Grazioli paid homage to the pattern in playful style, like with these shaggy knit stripes, which adorn an elongated overcoat.

Glossed over

Slick, high-shine textures lent this season’s menswear a futuristic sheen. At Jil Sander, lustrous crackled-leather overcoats appeared as part of a collection that designers Lucie and Luke Meier described as an ‘immersive capsule, smooth and embracing’.

Back out

At Prada’s womenswear show, the backs of tailored jackets were sliced away, as if to expose their lining, appearing as part of a collection that saw co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons excavate historical silhouettes.

Hands on

At Miu Miu’s show, rolled-up sleeves and heavy, worn-leather gloves suggested a woman at work. Indeed, gloves – largely oversized and scrunched up – appeared throughout the collections, with iterations at The Row, Marni and Balenciaga.

Tied up

The tie was reimagined by a gamut of designers. At Prada, it formed part of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ riff on the corporate uniform, while at Bottega Veneta, ties were cut from leather in Matthieu Blazy’s typically seductive style.

Fine feather

A fascination with old Hollywood glamour permeated Maximilian Davis’ collections for Ferragamo. Flourishes of feathers sprouted from necklines or heeled pumps – an ode, said Davis, to the liberatory dress codes of the 1920s.

Slim chance

Menswear designers provided a long and lean riposte to the oversized silhouette that has dominated recent seasons. Silvia Venturini Fendi was one such voice, presenting slim, straight-cut tailoring, inspired by the contrast between ‘town and country’.

Hood times

The idea of protection featured prominently, with designers creating silhouettes that wrapped and enveloped. At Issey Miyake, balaclavas appeared as part of a collection that saw Satoshi Kondo explore the instinctual ‘act of clothing the human body’.

Second skin

This season’s slick boots offer up a glamorous way of protecting the body as the temperature drops. Such is the case with this pair by Daniel Lee, whose latest collection for Burberry is inspired by the ‘heritage of the British outdoors’.

Buckle up

A defined waistline added a nostalgic elegance to the season’s menswear silhouette, whether in nipped-waist tailoring, tie-fastening overcoats or eye-catching belts, like those at Prada, which were perhaps A/W 2024’s most covetable accessory.

Models: Jimai Hoth at PRM Agency, Mohammed Banze at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kei Yoshino at Bryant Artists. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at Saint Luke using Chanel Fall-Winter 2024 Make-up Collection and No.1 de Chanel Skincare. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Kure Bazaar. Photography assistants: Callum Su, Joshua Hippolyte.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

As the dust settles on Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 – which concluded in Paris last week after previous stops in London, Florence and Milan – we revisit the season’s showstopping runway sets, which spanned the surreal, the transporting, and the serene.

From a ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Prada to the enormous cats that populated the runway at Dior Men – a collaboration with South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – we pick S/S 2025’s best sets and showspaces, which backdropped the month’s defining collections.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: the best runway sets

Dior Men’s giant cats, inspired by the work of ceramicist Hylton Nel

The inspiration for Kim Jones’ S/S 2025 collection for Dior Men was the works of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ While Nel’s naive motifs featured across the collection, a series of his cat sculptures were blown up by Jones to populate the Val-de-Grâce showspace in a celebration of what the British designer described as Nel’s ‘homespun monumentalism’.

Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito

On arrival at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito space – where Prada’s runway shows are held each season – guests were transported to what the house described as a ‘fairytale ravescape’ complete with a white cabin, door ajar, out of which techno music blared. As the show began, models emerged from the structure and down onto the runway wearing a collection that co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described as ‘capturing a spirit of freedom, of youthful optimism and energy’. ‘We wanted to create clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves,’ they elaborated. ‘There is a sense of spontaneity and optimism to these clothes - they reflect instinctive but deliberate choices, freedom.’

Zegna’s field of linen in Milan

This season, Zegna recreated a field of linen in a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Milan just a short drive from the city’s Linate airport. Doubling as the runway set for the house’s S/S 2025 show, each blade of ‘linen’ was created from lightweight strips of metals that moved gently as the models walked. Creative director Alessandro Sartori – whose summer collection used the fabric in a multitude of iterations and weights – said he wanted to evoke the feeling that nature was invading the industrial space. ‘Linen is a wonderful medium,’ said Sartori. ‘Not only [is it] traceable and true to our commitment to sustainability, but it is also as malleable and sensual as the idea of summer dressing we are prompting.’

A celebration of ‘artistic freedom’ and independence at Loewe

Taking place at Paris’ Garde Republicaine, Loewe’s stark white showspace doubled as an art gallery of sorts, seeing works from Paul Thek (a collection of miniature metal mice), Carlo Scarpa (an easel from the 1990s), Peter Hujar (a photograph of a single high-heeled shoe) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (a chair and coat hook, the latter draped with a red boa) populate the runway. Meanwhile, a vintage copy of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation lay open on the floor. Described by the house as ‘an exercise in curatorial subjectivity and narrative association’, each artist was chosen for their ‘fierce adherence to independence and artistic freedom’. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Gucci’s celebration of design at Milan’s Triennale

This season, Gucci creative director Sabato de Sarno chose the atrium of Milan’s Triennale museum – the city’s temple to design – to host his sophomore menswear show for the Italian house. While the Giovanni Muzio-designed space was unchanged for the show, ’a testament to our deep appreciation for its intrinsic essence’, a series of specially constructed green lacquered stools lined the museum’s corridors. They were dedicated to architect Gae Aulenti, the subject of an exhibition at the institution which runs until January 2025.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s windswept dandelions

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was titled ‘Up, Up, and Away’, its breezy, lightweight garments inspired by the wind: ‘the phenomena caused by wind, crafts and designs that react to wind, and forms that embody wind,’ described the Japanese brand. The showspace, constructed in the courtyard of Paris’ Mobilier National reflected the collection’s mood, seeing dandelion-like structures by Vincent de Belleval shudder gently in the breeze.

A silver runway for Dries Van Noten’s runway finale

Dries Van Noten transported guests to St Denis, a suburb on Paris’ northern outskirts, for his final show as creative director of his eponymous brand (earlier this year, the Belgian designer announced he would be stepping away from the label after 38 years). Staged in a vast warehouse transformed for the event – which was attended by well-wishers including designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Ann Demeulemeester and Stephen Jones – a runway made of silver leaf ran the length of the space. As models from the label’s past and present walked, shards of the foil hovered in the air, reflecting the S/S 2025 collection’s celebration of the fleeting and the ephemeral.

A Louis Vuitton takeover of UNESCO celebrating ‘global unity’

The rooftop of Maison l’Unesco in Paris was temporarily transformed into the show space for Pharrell Williams’ latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection. While the grass-covered runway was checkered to recall the house’s Damier motif – which has become a hallmark of Williams’ collections so far – the show centred around Erik Reitzel’s ‘Symbolic Globe’, which depicts the world as a vast, interlinked spherical grid. It was part of Williams’ plea for global unity with a collection designed to celebrate connection and community. ‘Activating the maison’s mind-expanding travel gene, the collection illustrates the degrees of similarities which bind us across the globe,’ Williams said via the collection’s notes.

Japan has a rich history of long-distance running, including the ‘Ekiden’ – road races covering vast distances over multiple days, the first taking place in 1917 from Kyoto to Tokyo. And, while contemporary Japanese runners now likely use the high-stack, bouncing-on-air carbon-plated sneakers that have since become the norm, a sleek new collaboration between Issey Miyake and New Balance returns to the ‘barefoot’, minimalist running sneakers of the 2010s, promising a feeling of ’sensuous physicality and barefoot mobility’, according to Issey Miyake designer Satoshi Kondo.

Indeed, the sneaker – titled the Issey Miyake × New Balance MT10O – looks back to the MT10, a minimalist trail running sneaker that was first introduced in 2011 as part of the Boston-based sportswear brand’s ‘Minimus’ series. With minimal padding and cushioning and a slim ‘close-to-the-ground’ sole, the new riff sees the original design reinterpreted by Kondo and his team in monochrome white, black and blue-green. Kondo says he was inspired by the ’natural and honest shape’ of the sneaker, which reflected the house’s S/S 2024 collection, where the design first appeared.

‘Sensuous physicality’: Issey Miyake x New Balance MT10O

In terms of construction, the Issey Miyake × New Balance MT10O combines aerodynamic panels of mesh with leather, while cord shoelaces recall trail-running sneakers and hiking boots. The outsole, which is designed for ’grip and durability’, is made for off-road and trail running, created by Italian rubber and sole expert Vibram (the ‘drop’ is just 4mm, designed for a midfoot strike). New Balance says the overall impression is to feel as if you are running without shoes. It is completed with a co-branded logo and a special shoe case to reflect the sneaker’s limited-edition status.

The partnership follows a slew of recent collaborations between New Balance and fashion labels – from Junya Watanabe to Aimé Leon Dore, Todd Snyder and Kith. Most recently, a collaboration with Miu Miu – for the brand’s S/S 2024 collection, a suede style with double-colour laces – has proved a sell-out hit, with re-sale sites selling the co-branded sneaker at almost triple its £780 retail price.

The sneakers launch in Japan on 15 May 2024, with a global release to follow on 14 June 2024.

isseymiyake.comnewbalance.co.uk

’Total freedom’ is how Japanese designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae describes the approach he and his team take to A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake, the innovative, lab-like offshoot of the Miyake Design Studio that was first introduced in 2021. Unbound from the ‘seasonal constraints’ of the other brands in the Issey Miyake roster, A-POC ABLE is defined by creative and technical ingenuity – an ode, says Miyamae, to the boundless imagination of house founder Issey Miyake, who died in August 2022.

This week, A-POC ABLE lands in London (launching 26 April 2024), marking a rare opportunity to purchase pieces from the brand outside of its native Japan. APOC itself stands for 'A Piece of Cloth’, a concept that was introduced in 1998 by Miyake whereby computer programming is used to create pieces of fabric with a single piece of thread, the surface imprinted with pattern pieces and instructions allowing the wearer to cut out the garment themselves.

A-POC Able Issey Miyake arrives in London

A-POC ABLE marks a continuation of Miyake’s original idea, comprising not only an array of innovative clothing production techniques – from tube-shaped garments which can be cut to size by their wearer to ’Steam Stretch’ whereby intricate pleated designs are achieved with fabric which reacts to heat – but also collaborations with an array of creatives, from artists to musicians, as well as those from technological industries.

‘[A-POC ABLE is about creating] products through industrial creation that can be worn in daily life, while simultaneously engaging in multiple projects focused on long-term research and development,’ explains Miyamae to Wallpaper*. ‘Through our collaborative projects with various fields – such as art, technology, traditional culture, industry-academia and more – we aim to introduce the fascinating aspects of our craftsmanship to fields that have previously shown little interest in fashion or Issey Miyake.

‘We like to learn unknown things,’ he continues. ‘Finding new discoveries not only from within our own team but also from interactions with people from various fields, offering different approaches to enhance our design and making. Art, in particular, allows us to gain new perspectives on society and to see things from different perspectives.’

As such, to mark the arrival of A-POC ABLE in London – available exclusively at the Issey Miyake store at 10 Brook Street, Mayfair – a number of limited-edition pieces from the brand’s collaboration with Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino will be available to purchase. For the project, two of Nishino’s signature ‘Diorama Maps’ – intricate images made up of photographs taken on wanders through cities such as New York and London, which are then pasted together to recall a map – have been recreated as clothing using a jacquard weaving technique unique to A-POC ABLE.

‘Mr Nishino’s work begins with walking, taking photographs, developing them, printing them in the darkroom and cutting the enormous number of contact sheets one by one – it takes about six months to complete the process of pasting the individual sheets and finally photographing them to create a single piece of work,’ says Miyamae. ’I felt that the process of his work was like weaving a piece of cloth.’

’[At first] we had great difficulty in designing a precise weave for the photographic representation,’ he says of the pieces, which comprise a reversible collar coat and a five-pocket pant. ’[But] we were able to give form to it through a process of trial and error, making full use of our past experience and expertise. The Diorama Map series, which is representative of Mr Nishino’s [oeuvre], is a work of much process, just like our clothes making.’

As for why Issey Miyake chose London as the latest destination for A-POC ABLE, Miyamae cites the city’s enduring creative spirit. ‘London is a cultured place where people have a high level of interest and understanding of art and design,’ he says. ’I have always wanted to have these people see our creations and meet others who share our passion.’

A-POC Able Issey Miyake launches 26 April 2024 at Issey Miyake Brook Street, London.

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’The most accurate reference guide to the work of Issey Miyake,‘ is how Midori Kitamura, chairman of the Miyake Design Studio, describes an expansive new tome that traverses more than 70 years of the experimental Japanese label and its eponymous founder, who died aged 84 in 2022. 

Titled Issey Miyake: 1960 – 2022 (released 5 April 2024, available for pre-order, £80, at Waterstones), the Taschen-published tome is a visually rich catalogue of Miyake’s collections, which are largely defined by material innovation – such as his signature polyester micro-pleats – and colourful, expressive silhouettes that verge on sculpture. As such, the book features imagery from some of the period’s definitive photographers, including Yuriko Takagi and Irving Penn – the latter responsible for some of the most enduring imagery of Miyake’s early collections. 

Issey Miyake: 1960 to 2022, from Taschen

‘Miyake liked to convey his ideas visually, so we used that framework as our starting point,’ says Kitamura, who conceived the book having worked with Miyake for over four decades (among a slew of other projects, she was also instrumental in the founding of Pleats Please Issey Miyake). ‘Miyake left us with a clear roadmap to follow, going forward. We have and will always carry this map in our pockets as we move forward, always carrying his dreams and his vision into the future.’

Alongside, a series of texts by Kazuko Koike – founder and design director of Tokyo’s Sagacho Exhibit Space – explore Miyake’s ’unique fusion of poetry and practicality’, which was largely achieved through experiments on the body with fabric and material. ‘The body, the fabric covering it and a comfortable relationship between the two,’ said Miyake of the focus of his work, which despite its oftentimes avant-garde stylings was nonetheless infused with a feeling of pragmatism.

In the book, these innovations – which include the ’A Piece of Cloth’ concept, the ’Body Series’ of 1982 and Pleats Please – are catalogued by Kitamura in encyclopedic fashion, alongside the other landmark moments of Miyake’s pioneering career in fashion. As such, it is the most complete resource on the Japanese designer yet.

’The Miyake Design Studio has always been an organic, constantly evolving entity, ever true to Mr Miyake’s vision and under his supervision,’ says Kitamura. ‘We are fortunate that he left us such a clear path forward. We will continue his work, carrying his vision, his touchstones and his dreams into the future.’

’Issey Miyake: 1960 – 2022’ (5 April) is available for pre-order, £80, at Waterstones. 

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In 1965, having graduated with a degree in graphic design from Tama Art University in his native Japan, Issey Miyake would travel to Paris. It was in the French city that the designer would learn his craft: alongside compatriot Kenzo Takada (of fashion house Kenzo), he enrolled at l’École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, studying dressmaking. Later, having founded fashion label Miyake Design Studio in 1970 in Tokyo, he would return to Paris in 1973 to show his collections – a deep-rooted link to the city which would continue throughout his life (the designer would show in Paris until his retirement from the brand in 1997).

Inside Issey Miyake’s luminous new Paris store

A newly opened Issey Miyake Paris store, located in the exclusive Triangle D’Or shopping district, continues this legacy, and marks one of the designer’s final commissions (though formerly retired, the Miyake remained involved in the running of the company until his death in August 2022). Japanese designer and artist Tokujin Yoshioka – who has worked on numerous Issey Miyake projects and stores over the last three decades – remembers first being approached by Miyake in 2021 to work on the store. ’Paris is a centre of fashion and a hub of culture,’ he describes, having masterminded the new space at 28 rue François 1er, which replaces the former flagship on Rue Royale in the 8th arrondissement. Titled ’ISSEY MIYAKE / PARIS’, ’it is a space that gives form to this cultural energy for the future,’ Yoshioka tells Wallpaper*.

The 360 sq m store, which stretches across two stories, is located in the former headquarters of Europe 1 radio station, marking the first time that a retailer has occupied the space. The exterior is typically Parisian – a 19th-century stone facade with vast windows and traditional mouldings – while the interior is designed in Yoshioka’s sleek, modern style, with airy, white-walled rooms interrupted only by angular metal fixtures and glass vitrines. ‘I was thinking [about] combining contemporary elements with the 19th-century French architecture to express the contrast of time,’ explains Yoshioka.

‘The architecture accommodates the space which is designed to be minimalistic, [while] details are designed to give the impression of lightness, as if the clothes were floating,’ he continues. Of those clothes, the store will stock the majority of Issey Miyake’s lines including Issey Miyake, Pleats Please, Homme Plissé, Bao Bao, perfumes, watches, eyewear and more.

Though it is the store’s orange aluminium accent walls – recurring throughout and able to be viewed from the street – which provide the nexus of the space. Representing the rising sun, they are an attempt to capture the joy and levity of Miyake’s design philosophy. ’The aluminium walls are individually coloured with an anodising technique and installed at the site to create a large luminous orange wall, shining like the sun,’ says Yoshioka. ‘[They] express Issey Miyake's philosophy of craftsmanship and energy for the future.’

ISSEY MIYAKE / PARIS, 28 rue François 1er, 75008, Paris is open now. 

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A mood of escape and discovery infused the S/S 2024 womenswear collections, with designers taking a round-the-world odyssey – both real and imagined – to create a series of striking, craft-rich looks which offer a dramatic and colourful riposte to the banality of the everyday.

Here, as seen in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands worldwide now), photographer Nicolas Kern, Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes and Dutch model Bente Oort take a trip to the otherwordly landscapes of the Canary Islands, capturing the season’s best looks amid the archipelago’s unique vistas and volcanic black-sand beaches. 

From Matthieu Blazy’s pom-pom-adorned dress for Bottega Veneta – which appears on the limited-edition cover of the March 2024 Style Issue – to the cocoon-like wrapped forms of Issey Miyake, or the intricate embellishments that adorn looks from Isabel Marant, Feben and Carven, it makes for a series of electrifying ensembles which capture the mood of offbeat elegance set to define the S/S 2024 season ahead. Enjoy the trip. 

S/S 2024 womenswear looks for escape and discovery

Model: Bente Oort at Platform Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Daniele Falzone at Blend Management using Davines. Make-up: Jimmy Owen Jones at Julian Watson Agency. Photography assistants: Francesco Colombo, David Gimenez. Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt. Post-production: Ink. Local production: Studio Volca.

A version of this article appears in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* available on international newsstands in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

A ‘creative session’ is how the multidisciplinary French artist and designer Ronan Bouroullec describes his collaboration with Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, revealed at the Japanese brand’s show this past January in Paris. As the colour-soaked collection, which features Bouroullec’s expressive felt-tip drawings as prints, arrives in stores this week, Wallpaper* revisits a conversation with the artist held backstage at the Palais de Tokyo show.

The curving white walls of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo were hung with a series of garments adorned with the instinctive, abstract drawings of Ronan Bouroullec, the multidisciplinary designer and artist who creates these works as part of his daily practice (his tool is a set of Japanese felt-tip pens).

They provided the backdrop for Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest menswear show, which featured Bouroullec’s work as prints across the collection, as well as inspiring its mood. Issey Miyake called it a ’creative session’ rather than a collaboration, an exchange of ideas built on Bouroullec’s previous relationship with the Issey Miyake brand (in 2000, he designed the interior of Issey Miyake’s A-POC store in Paris alongside his brother Erwan).

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s ‘creative session’ with Ronan Bouroullec

This is not to say that he jumped immediately at the opportunity, having been famously reticent to see these designs used on clothing or fabrics in the past (though last year, he collaborated with Kvadrat on a series of textiles which recalled the lines and textures of the pieces, which he largely sees as personal and meditative). ‘It’s like a trail that you walk every day until you arrive. You see when you’ve arrived, but you don’t remember what happened while you were walking,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time.

‘I’ve always had a lot of requests from fashion brands, and I always say no,’ Bouroullec says. ’I feel like fashion uses things, and then it goes in the garbage so quickly. But Issey Miyake is different, I know it as a brand. If anything, they started off being too respectful: I told them ”I don’t want you to be polite with me”. I wanted to see something fresh, where they were not seen as a decorative object but part of the design.’

Indeed, the resulting collection captured the artist’s intuitive approach with silhouettes wrapped around the body in colourful layers and flourishes of Bouroullec’s work appearing throughout. A series of asymmetric scarves, meanwhile, recalled the artist’s expressive, abstract motifs. The collection notes said that it was an exploration of how creative material (here, Bouroullec’s drawings) can be translated into clothing.

‘All the members of the design team are drawn to his work,’ a spokesperson for the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake team tells me backstage at the show. ‘We think there’s something really poetic and beautiful about it – you don’t just look at the artwork, you are imagining yourself diving into it. It was a creative, and inspiring, session for us. I think the scarves capture the essence of the collection – one of the design team members had the idea of actually wearing the drawings.’

’It’s been extremely interesting because it is like it’s like growing or building an exhibition or painting, colour after colour,’ says Bouroullec. ’All for just 15 minutes on the runway – it’s extraordinary.’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s ‘creative session’ with Ronan Bouroullec is available now at Issey Miyake Brook Street, as well as stores in the US, Japan and Italy. It will be available in France later this month.

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Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024 – the closing leg of men’s fashion month, concluded in the French capital this week. Having started with Pharrell Williams’ anticipated sophomore ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton – an ode to the American West and its distinctive dress codes – the week continued with Givenchy’s first show since the departure of Matthew M Williams (the collection will be designed by the in-house team), another Paris outing for British designer Grace Wales Bonner, and an intimate show from Rick Owens held at his Paris home. 

Here, the very best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024, as it happened. 

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024

Wooyoungmi

The mythic allure of Seoul – as viewed through an outsider’s eye – was the starting point of Wooyoungmi’s latest collection. Youngmi Woo (better known by her moniker, Madame Woo) began the collection with a book by Scottish missionary Alexander Williams from 1870, somewhat surreally titled ‘Knowing About Korea Without Ever Going There’. The designer noted that even now – as Seoul becomes one of the foremost producers of pop culture, particularly music – the city remains ‘an idea: a faraway metropole like no other; a place many know about without ever going there’.

Here, she set about to create her own ’portrait’ of the city’s style, one informed by both reality and perception. Indeed, it was a collection infused with the easy, eclectic mood of the street – she said she wanted it to feel like observing a stream of particularly well-dressed passers-by – from wide-legged washed jeans worn with roomy baseball jackets to colourful rugby and football shirts, and playful riffs on corporate suiting (denim jackets and jeans were worn with shirts and ties for her dressed-up version of the Canadian tuxedo). Strongest, though, was a beautiful array of outerwear – a category that Madame Woo has long been astute at creating – from abbreviated pea coats to elongated styles in heritage fabrics, or blown-up versions of the classic women’s tweed jacket. 

Valentino

Pierpaolo Piccioli has long used colour to conjure a particular mood (memorably, he presented an entire women’s collection in a single shade of pink, dubbed ‘Pink PP’ and granted its own Pantone colour). Here, it was breezy sky blue, which adorned both benches and doors in the ornate salons of Paris’ Monnaie de Paris for the designer’s latest menswear-only show (last season, Valentino returned to the menswear calendar having previously been shown co-ed during womenswear fashion month). The choice hinged on an exploration of contemporary manhood, the colour with which blue is now associated, particularly after the birth of a child. But Piccioli said he was thinking about how colour can be resignified – traditionally, he said, blue was associated with femininity, the shift only happening in this century – hoping to present it here as something fluid, a mood which extended to the clothing itself, seeing archetypal menswear garments, like the traditional Italian suit, cut with a softer line or embellished with moments of decoration recalling the house’s haute couture collections.

Hermès 

Véronique Nichanian’s approach to Hermès menswear is to capture a feeling of pleasure through clothing: an endless search to create garments which please both visually and physically, a balance she has struck in her over-three-decade-long tenure so far. Yesterday’s menswear show provided a gamut of options for the Hermès man come next winter, particularly in the way of outerwear, from a beautiful shearling-lined leather parka to shorter leather peacoats adorned with a collage of utility pockets (in Hermès’ playful parlance, these were pockets that ‘slip and slide’). Elsewhere, a melange of knitwear – some adorned with painterly prints and presented in layers – met riffs on heritage checks, like Prince of Wales plaid, which ran throughout. Typically seductive adornments came in the way of accessories: versions of the house’s roomy Haut à Courroies carry all came in textures of smooth barénia and sombrero calfskin, while a smaller, book-size bag came with utility pockets and was grasped in the hand. A final flourish came in an array of eveningwear, including a tailored jacket and coat in calf hair leather, cut with a narrow, elegant line. 

Loewe 

Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins provided the starting point for Jonathan Anderson’s audacious fall outing for Loewe, set amid a strange cathedral to masculinity where ‘stained-glass window’ screens buzzed with images of the designer’s phalanx of celebrity devotees – from Jamie Dornan and Josh O’Connor to Omar Apollo and Manu Rios. They had filmed themselves on their iPhones, preening their reflection, while around them Hawkins’ dizzying collages flickered, capturing the artist’s fixations, which span Roman statuary, French decadence and contemporary celebrity culture, as well as depictions of masculinity and the male body, which is the through line of his work. At the end of the runway were a series of Hawkins paintings; after the show, Anderson called it the ‘altar’. 

The idea of collage – of ‘collaged realness,’ as Anderson described – ran throughout the collection, which had a mood of irreverence and youth. Enormous leather cargo pants were worn with baseball sneakers and skewiff checkered shirts; sweatpants, elongated sweaters and handbags were adorned with Hawkins’ saturated works; while stacked up layered garments appeared in colourful glimpses from beneath a long overcoat, as if the model was concealing a pile of laundry. An elegant riff on the trench – with a dropped tie waistline – came in leather, while riffs on the pussybow emerged in a melange of textures, alongside fairisle knits. A visual trick, meanwhile, came in a pair of trousers attached to a pair of socks, which were in turn attached to a pair of shoes. ’You're kind of telling someone: this is what you're wearing. You can’t get away from it, it’s like the media,' Anderson described. 

It emerged from the designer’s observation about the way modern life has ‘become a collage’; a never-ending stream of algorithmic images combining like Hawkins’ works, which in some ways predicted the way we consume visual culture today (he has been working on these pieces for over 30 years). ‘I’m looking at this idea of iconography,’ said Anderson. ‘It’s all about different types of validation… how we perceive ourselves to the outside world. It’s a new psychology. What that means in the future, I don’t know – but I think it can be exciting.’

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

There was a striking simplicity to Rei Kawakubo’s latest menswear outing, which largely eschewed the more unconventional silhouettes of the Japanese brand’s womenswear collections towards what was at its essence a studying in tailoring (albeit in the designer’s idiosyncratic, imporvisational style). Largely in shades of white, cream and ecru – ‘white is symbolic of prayer,’ was all Kawakubo offered in her typically enigmatic press notes – tailored jackets were nipped tightly across the chest (some with double lapels, or sliced away in sections), while trousers had a generous volume, ballooning just above the ankles (other jackets were worn with wide, elongated shorts or pleated kilts). Embellishment came in the form of rows of stitched-on white buttons or glimpses of sequins revealed beneath blazers and knits, while the final flourish came from playful headpieces by Gary Card, made from wrapped up garments from Comme Des Garçons ubiquitous ‘Play’ line. 

Dior Men

The invitation for Kim Jones’ latest Dior show featured a photograph of Soviet-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who in a much-mythologised grasp for freedom defected to the West on a 1961 trip to Paris. It was taken by Jones’ uncle, a photographer and former ballet dancer who had struck a friendship with Nureyev and documented his life in the West in a series of images which for the show had been collated by his nephew in a book left on attendees’ seats. ‘Nureyev is entwined with my personal history because of my uncle,’ explained Jones. ‘I had been thinking about the relationship between the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn and Monsieur Dior. The masculine interpretation of this involved thinking about her most famous dance partner, Nureyev.’

The heady liberation which Nureyev has come to epitomise (the famous Daily Express headline the day after his defection ran ‘Dance to Freedom’) inspired one of Jones’s strongest outings for the house yet. Divided into ready-to-wear and couture – the latter twenty looks were a demonstration of the extraordinary abilities of the Dior atelier – the collection moved from rehearsal room to stage (fittingly, the show was presented in the round to the booming sounds of ‘Dance of the Knights’ from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet score, as reinterpreted by Max Richter). ‘The collection – or rather collections, are about contrast: the contrasts in the house of Dior in terms of ready-to-wear and haute couture,’ explained Jones. ‘It’s the difference between onstage and backstage; the life of Nureyev theatrically and in reality. Here it is a meeting of the dancer’s style with that of the Dior archive.’

So there were twisting turbans by Stephen Jones evoking those worn by Nureyev in the dance studio (other models had their hair scraped back with thick black bands), wide tailored shorts worn with white socks and a masculine riff on the ballet pump, or a series of lightweight zip-up ribbed knits which plunged low on the neckline like ballet cardigans. Tailoring, meanwhile, had a feeling of lightness and fluidity, gently flared and based on archival pieces from Yves Saint Laurent’s tenure at the house. The final flourish of couture looks – which at the end were heralded by being raised high on a rotating platform as if models were dancers in a music box– were perhaps Jones’ most theatrical expressions yet, from an extraordinary beaded white tabard with a thick collar of pearls (worn here with white tights and ballet pumps decorated with the house’s cannage motif) to a kimono-style cape, based on a style Nureyev wore throughout his life, which took three people a staggering ten months to complete.

Paul Smith

Paul Smith noted that this latest collection was a demonstration of the motto that you have to know the rules in order to break them. His career has been defined by the dictum, whereby a deep-rooted knowledge and respect for British tailoring has been enlivened and reinterpreted through the designer’s witty, eclectic use of colour and print. This dichotomy was on full display in this latest collection, which combined hallmarks of British style – WW2 rider jackets, classic overcoats, padded gilets – with modernist-inspired colours, prints and motifs, including a ‘Photogram’ print inspired by Man Ray’s hazy ‘Rayograph’ images, ‘a trailblazing technique which stood as its own rebellion against the restrictive norms of the day,’ as Smith described. Colours, meanwhile, spanned deep purples, navies and browns, with flashes of lime green and ochre, while Smith’s vividly hued ‘Signature Stripe’ motif appeared across layered cardigans and knit sweaters.

Junya Watanabe MAN

A multi-generational cast appeared in Junya Watanabe’s latest collection, which was titled ‘Reconstructed Suiting’. ‘I wish for men of different generations to wear these suits,’ was all that Watanabe offered in way of description, though there was certainly a mood of the quotidien to the outing, which largely played on hallmarks of men’s style – from tailoring to denim jeans, striped shirts and hoodies. A sense of hybridity ran throughout the individual garments: a tailored jacket, for example, was extended into a coat with the addition of a panel evocative of a classic trench, while others were overlaid with panels of chinos or jeans. Coats, which were held onto the body with a panel across the chest, and worn with classic pinstripe pants, heralded a shift towards simplicity, though Watanabe’s more distinct hallmarks – namely patchwork – continued to appear throughout. And, despite the mood of reduction, Watanabe’s desire for collaboration does not seem to abate; here, versions of (among others) Brooks Brothers, Palace and Carharrt’s own signature styles were reassessed with the Japanese designer’s distinct, disruptive eye. 

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was born from a collaboration with the polymathic French artist and designer Ronan Bouroullec. Here, the design team looked towards his drawings – colourful abstract forms which he draws each morning using a Japanese felt tip brush – which in the collection were used as adornment across the brand’s pleated separates, or informing its freewheeling mood, which this season had an improvisational air (a series of colourful scarves, for example, were draped around the model's bodies to recall Bouroullec’s work). 

As such, the collection was titled ‘Immersed in the Wilds of Creativity’ and was an attempt to explore the translation of creative materials (here, Bouroullec’s oeuvre) into clothing. It made for a liberated mood, seeing beautifully layered silhouettes – many of which had the feeling of having been wrapped or loosely twisted around the body – meet moments of artistic flourish, such as a trio of models who carried cushions decorated with motifs reminiscent of Bouroullec’s work in their hands. 

Amiri

A suitably dramatic set – enormous velvet curtains, an expanse of monogrammed carpet – provided the backdrop for Mike Amiri’s latest collection, which the American designer described as an ode to the Hollywood epic. Inspired by the nostalgic glamour of his home town of Los Angeles, louche tailoring was a focus – whether elongated satin blazers, jacquard evening jackets, or suiting with a loose, pyjama cut – which was inspired at once by Old Hollywood dress codes and the undone glamour of the 1990s. Befitting the inspiration, the shimmer of crystals ran throughout the expansive collection, whether as stacked-up brooches adorning the lapels of jackets or twinkling across undone shirts and beanie hats.

Rick Owens

Rick Owens opened the door to his Parisian home on Paris’ Place du Palais Bourbon to host his latest menswear show, titled ’Porterville’ (a reference to the Californian city where the designer was born and grew up). Held amid the vast concrete rooms, sparsely decorated with Owens’ monolithic furniture, he chose the intimate location – a stark opposition to his usual shows held on the forecourt of the Palais de Tokyo – as a sign of ‘respectful restraint’ in response to world turbulence (recent seasons have seen him grappling with creation during times of war and crisis). 

Here, the balm was community; Owens invited Steven from Fecal Matter and Gena Marvin – both known for their strange, otherworldly looks – to walk the runway, while collaborating with London-based designer Straytukay on inflatable footwear, and rubber-wear specialist Matisse Di Maggio on pieces crafted from recycled tyres. A mood of envelopment and solace ran throughout; enormous shaggy forms wrapped around the body in a suggestion of protection, while knitted all-in-ones were crafted in soft alpaca, cashmere and merino.

Wales Bonner

British designer Grace Wales Bonner has long riffed on the hallmarks of American collegiate style in her oeuvre. She returned to them this season, with a typically poetic show held in Paris’ Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Howard University, a storied Black institution in Washington DC (alumni include Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison), was at the collection’s centre: ‘a celebration of [its] shining lineage’, ‘where depictions of homecoming resound: hip-hop performances, readings from the poets, international gatherings on the green’. In this spirit, a live performance came from musician Yasiin Bey.

The collection itself clashed the college uniform – from Howard Crew-adorned sweaters to monogrammed varsity and baseball jackets – with moments of elegance and craft, from crocheted mirrors across tailoring (created by hand in India) to beads, pearls and amethysts adorning jewellery and brooches, which suggested a ceremonial flourish. Ceremonial too was a beautiful black tuxedo – perhaps recalling the moment of graduation – which the designer created alongside Savile Row tailors Anderson and Sheppard. The mood of refinement continued to her latest Adidas Originals collaboration, which comprised miniature handbags and versions of the Superstar sneaker in crocodile-embossed leather.

Givenchy

The house’s historic haute couture salon in Hôtel de Caraman on Paris’ Avenue Georges provided the setting for Givenchy’s first runway show since the departure of American designer Matthew M Williams late last year. Befitting the location – in which Hubert de Givenchy worked for 36 years – the show transpired like a traditional salon presentation, with guests sitting around tables in the space’s various white-walled rooms (madeleines, truffle sandwiches and champagne completed the mood of refinement). Designed this season by an in-house team (the new creative director is yet to be announced), the press notes said the collection began with a consideration of ‘gentlemanliness’ inspired by Mr Givenchy and his dress codes: ‘the duality of his public and personal wardrobes: a sartorial formality energised by an inimitable off-duty sense for nonchalance, flamboyance and seduction’.

It made for an eclectic offering. There were cat-adorned vest tops and fronds of synthetic hair, which crept out from under tailored jackets or adorned dramatic overcoats, ladylike silk headscarves (based on a style from the archive), louche, unbuttoned silk scarves, layers of knitwear, and sculptural hats. Tailoring, of course, ran throughout, in various iterations – some sliced away along the sleeves, others playing on classic eveningwear – though it was largely double-breasted and narrow in silhouette. At the end of the show, no one came out to take the final bow. Who will do so come next season remains to be seen.

Lemaire

Lemaire’s latest show was staged in the brand’s airy, white-walled headquarters in Paris’ Place des Vosges. Warm herbal cocktails were served in the covered courtyard before the show – a balm to the day’s cold, drizzly weather – adding to the intimate feel of the presentation, which suggested an invitation into the brand’s serene inner sanctum. As such, the clothing itself, which largely evolves season on season rather than any more dramatic shifts, continued to hone the brand’s signature look, one of discreet, uncomplicated elegance (one already underscored by the staff at the show, chicly dressed in varying tones of Lemaire ecru and off-white). 

Christophe Lemaire, who runs the eponymous label with Sarah-Linh Tran, noted that he felt like now was the right time to invite people into this space, which comprises the brand’s entire operation, including the atelier and workshop. As such, they talked about the collection as capturing the solace of home: enveloping, layered looks which took their cue from dance attire in the way pieces caressed the body like ‘a second skin’. Others subverted the domestic for wear out of doors, like elegant ‘in-and-out pyjamas’ or outerwear which recalled the proportions of a bathrobe. 

Louis Vuitton

It was out to Paris’ Bois de Boulogne for Pharrell Williams’ sophomore ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton. This follows his debut last summer in Paris, and a subsequent pre-fall collection, where the designer had erected an enormous box in the shadow of Frank Gehry’s sweeping Fondation Louis Vuitton. Inside the A/W 2024 show venue, vast projections lined the walls depicting the rocky plains of the United States, providing a hint of what was to come (the invitation, an LV-branded cowboy hat and an engraved harmonica, provided another). Here was Williams’ ode to that most American of archetypes: the cowboy, albeit filtered through the Parisian sensibilities of Louis Vuitton (‘Paris to VA’, in reference to his home state, is a continuing motif in his tenure so far). So, there were denim chaps and cowboy hats, Western-style shirts with frilled yolks and pearl-and-sequin adornment, and riffs on workwear, from a tailored take on the traditional double-kneed carpenter’s pant to a footwear collaboration with Timberland. Requisite cowboy hats completed the look, while enormous gilded Louis Vuitton trunks were wheeled along the runway on wooden frontier carriages.

Before the show, Williams noted that part of the reason for this collection was to provide a more expansive vision of the cowboy trope (Black and Native American cowboys were among some of the first cowboys in the United States, though they have been largely excluded from contemporary depictions of the era). As such, the collection contained a ’creative exchange’ with artists from the Dakota and Lakota nations, who assisted with Williams’ vision for the collection, including a version of the house’s ’Speedy’ bag, which was embroidered with a Dakota Flower motif, or ’Keepalls’ which featured designs reminiscent to those found on ‘parfleche’, stretched buffalo hides which were historically decorated by Native American communities. To close the show, powwow group Native Voices of Resistance – clad in designs conceived by Dee Jay Two Bears of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe – performed as a gentle flurry of snow fell from the ceiling, the projected desert on the walls now dusted white. It made for a show that spoke of Williams’ vast, energetic vision for Louis Vuitton – all that was left to wonder is where the designer will take his odyssey next.

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024

This past May, Issey Miyake celebrated 30 years of Pleats Please Issey Miyake, the 1993-founded offshoot of the Japanese label which was pioneering for its use of knife-edge pleated polyester which is washable, static-resistant and entirely crease-proof. Since available in an array of colourful hues and evolving silhouettes, it has become the epitome of the late Issey Miyake’s mantra that ‘design is not for philosophy – it’s for life’.

On November 11, 2023, Issey Miyake will celebrate another landmark: 10 years of Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, the menswear counterpart to Pleats Please which largely features the same time-honed garment pleating technology. ’[Homme Plissé] creates clothing that is defined not by times but by its wearers,’ said the brand in a statement. ‘Since inception to this day, the brand has worked with the same technology to design and make clothing with an undeviating approach – creating garments of original forms that lend themselves to qualities of timelessness.’

Ten years of Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

To mark the occasion, Issey Miyake will release two new limited-edition Homme Plissé sets, the ‘Decade’ and ‘Decade Sweater’. The former includes simple silhouettes across T-shirts, trousers and a jacket – available in a typically broad selection of colours, including light grey, charcoal, black, red, beige, ivory and yellow – while the latter is a new crew-neck sweater with the brand’s logo knitted into the back (it is available in black and white). The designs are chosen to put the garment-pleating technology front and centre, demonstrating the unique craft between each piece.

The idea of making is also explored in a new photo series by Henry Leutwyler, seeing the New York-based photographer hone in on the production of Homme Plissé garments in the still-life images – whether capturing pins, measuring tapes, buttons, scissors or piles of labels. ’Together, they tell a story of the last 10 years,’ says Issey Miyake of the images, which will also be displayed in two of the brand’s Japanese outlets, Issey Miyake Ginza | Cube and Issey Miyake Semba | Creation Space.

The project marks a continuation of the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake show held this past June in Paris, which the brand called ‘a refinement of what is quintessential to the brand’. Held in Musée des Arts Décoratifs and titled ‘Everyday, One of a Kind, Now and Hereafter’, it was a celebration of the plissé pleat, seeing the design team cut sections of an enormous roll of pleated paper – live on the runway – revealing pieces from the collection hidden within. To finish, these pieces were placed on the models by hand before they took their final lap of the space.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake Decade and Decade Sweater series will be available at selected Issey Miyake stores worldwide. 

Henry Leutwyler’s photo series will be on display from November 11 at Issey Miyake Ginza | Cube and Issey Miyake Semba | Creation Space.

isseymiyake.com

Issey Miyake aficionados will know that a multitude of labels make up the cult Japanese brand – from the eponymous womenswear line to signature Pleats Please and Homme Plissé, or Bao Bao, with its distinct geometric accessories. As of this week, IM Men – a menswear line designed by MDS, the Miyake Design Studio – arrives for the first time outside Japan in a new pop-up at the Issey Miyake store on London’s Brook Street. 

Built on many of the same principles as the other labels in the conglomerate – it is particularly similar to 132 5. Issey Miyake in its origami-like experiments with form – IM Men is designed to withstand the rigours of everyday life while retaining the lightness and ease synonymous with Issey Miyake’s eponymous founder. With a focus on the quotidian wardrobe, all the pieces can be easily packed away without creasing while playful elements – lines of vivid colour, intricate pleated seams – give the collection a feeling of levity.

Issey Miyake’s IM Men label lands in London

In the brand’s words, it is about ‘integrating new ideas and experimental processes to make clothing of ease and comfort that brings about a sense of joy and new discoveries in everyday living’.

So what to expect from the limited-time London store? Highlights include the ‘Flat Bi-Colour’ series, whereby tailored coats and trousers can be folded completely flat, while gussets for ease of movement are boldly coloured for ‘visual delight’ (each piece is also made from an innovative wrinkle-resistant technical fabric, meaning they can be easily transported).

Meanwhile, the featherweight ‘Air Pleats’ pieces are some of the brand’s lightest yet, created from hollow thread and plant-derived polyester and with distinct pleated details. Finally, the ‘Motion’ series is defined by its ability to boldly transform: a pair of shorts rolls into a pair of trousers, a short jacket into an elongated coat.

As of now, the store will run from today (7 September 2023) for one month only, though it looks likely that this will just be the beginning of IM Men’s arrival in Europe – or indeed the world – with longer-term availability no doubt in the works.

IM Men is available from Issey Miyake at 10 Brook Street, London from September 7, 2023 for one month.

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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

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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‘Light. Future. Sustainability.’ These are the three words that Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka uses to sum up the essence of his latest project: a new Issey Miyake flagship store, which opens in Tokyo’s Ginza district this week.

The new store, Issey Miyake Ginza / 442, which spans four levels of a new-build tower in the upmarket retail district, is an airy, minimalist space, with subtly nuanced shades of grey and angular lines of light and shadow.

Large rectangular aluminium panels appear to float in space, spanning walls above bright colour-bursts of Issey Miyake clothing and bordering walls of windows, evoking a softly futuristic and industrial edge.

Inside Issey Miyake Ginza / 422

The panels also form a minimalist staircase that cleanly transects each level of the space, with the aluminium’s light grey tone – matte and cloud-like – blending in smoothly with the concrete flooring.

The minimalist backdrop provides the perfect visual counterpoint to the organic curves of the Issey Miyake knit installations in the window, plus the carefully curated collections showcased throughout.

The ground floor is home to the rainbow-bright pinks, greens and browns of the latest Pleats Please Issey Miyake collection, alongside bags; Issey Miyake womenswear spans the first floor; A-poc Able Issey Miyake is on the second floor; plus menswear, watches and glasses are found on the basement level.

Taking Wallpaper* on a pre-opening tour of Issey Miyake Ginza / 442, Yoshioka explains: ‘Simplicity is important. I was thinking about how to design the entire store as one coherent whole. You see how the aluminium panels intersect and cut into the space, creating an integrated concept.’

He adds: ‘The panels are not just for decoration – they also cover the hanger rack and on the windows, they provide shade from the sunshine. It’s spatially functional as well as aesthetic.’

Reflecting Issey Miyake’s principles, sustainability is also interwoven through the space: Yoshioka created panels from ecologically sustainable recycled aluminium, echoing the technique he used to bring to life the torch he designed for the Tokyo Olympics.

‘These panels were made by the same manufacturer in Japan as the Olympic torch,’ he explains. ‘For the torch project, I studied aluminium metal in-depth and applied that knowledge to make these panels. The panels are typically used for structural elements, created by an extrusion method.’

He adds: ‘I like using aluminium. As a material, it works really well with light. When I design, I often think about light and use it as a concept or theme. Whether it’s a surface or an interior, I like to think about how people experience light.’

The new flagship sits just a stone’s throw from the company’s existing Issey Miyake store, which was designed by Taku Satoh and first opened in 2011. This sister store, now renamed Issey Miyake Ginza / 445 (reflecting its address), has been lightly renovated to create the new gallery space Cube.

The first Issey Miyake gallery in Tokyo (in addition to exhibition spaces in Kyoto and Osaka), Cube aims to tell the multi-layered stories behind the process of design and making. Its debut exhibition showcases installations inspired by the vivid flowers and bold shades of the brand’s sixth Ikko Tanaka Issey Miyake collection, featuring the motifs of the late iconic Japanese graphic designer.

For Yoshioka, who has designed numerous Issey Miyake stores over the past three decades, the new Ginza flagship is the first major store project to be completed since the passing of Issey Miyake in 2022.

Reflecting on his legacy, he says: ‘It’s very positive what he has left behind. He was working until the last moment of his life. In my last phone call with Issey san, he wanted to have a meeting for a project we are working on. That attitude is really inspiring.’

‘I consider myself to have been one of the protégés of Issey san and I hope to continue his legacy and help create many good designs and beautiful things.’

He adds: ‘I would sum up the philosophy of Issey Miyake with the words innovation and challenge. If by entering this space, people can see this philosophy in a clear way, then I think I have done my job.’

isseymiyake.com

On each of the seats at Satoshi Kondo’s S/S 2023 show for Issey Miyake – held this past September at Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 – was a piece of washi paper, a traditional form of paper from Japan which is handcrafted from the fibres of the gampi tree or mulberry bush (such is washi’s cultural importance, it is Unesco-protected). Washi has been utilised for over 1,000 years as a fabric for clothing, particularly in northern Japan – its construction means it is far stronger than regular paper – and the late Issey Miyake was captivated by it in his lifetime, utilising its unique fibres in his collections, mixed with polyester or cotton to create innovative new fabrications. Indeed, the designer’s fascination with washi speaks to his wider pioneering approach: the marriage of the traditional and the modern, handcraft with innovation, the ability to begin with a simple square of paper and end with a bold new proposition for fabric, texture or form. Washi paper is also traditionally used for origami, another historic Japanese art form which captivated Miyake, and to which his sculptural, intricately folded clothing has often been compared. 

The S/S 2023 presentation was the first since Miyake died aged 84 this past August. As such, the piece of paper was embossed with words of tribute from head designer Kondo (who took the role in 2019, having worked at the brand since 2007) and the rest of his design team, while Miyake’s portrait was projected around the Porte de la Villette space prior to the show’s start. The collection itself looked towards the idea of ‘soft sculpture’, ‘kneading, carving, and shaping’ the garments in a way which recalled Miyake’s own command of body and silhouette. ‘Every collection I [have] created with my team is a reflection of what we learned from Miyake,’ Kondo says.

Here, in a conversation in the weeks after the show, Kondo speaks to Wallpaper* about Miyake’s enduring, ever-present influence and attempting to capture the same ‘unprecedented joy and wonder’ in his own collections. 

Satoshi Kondo on Issey Miyake S/S 2023

Wallpaper*: This was the first show since Issey Miyake’s death. How did you want to pay tribute to him with this collection, and show?

Satoshi Kondo: Every collection I [have] created with my team is a reflection of what we learnt from Miyake, as his philosophy and approach to design and making is the foundation of the brand’s identity and the source of inspiration for my [own] design work. Moving forward, as we have always done in the past, we will challenge ourselves to create original, unprecedented clothing that brings a sense of joy and wonder – building upon what is true to the brand’s identity.

For this show in particular, we put our thoughts into words in memory of Miyake and embossed them on a piece of hand-crafted washi to be handed out to the audience.

W*: Were there elements of the collection where you were particularly thinking about Miyake?

SK: I think his influence is present everywhere, permeating through the collection, in the way we engaged with design and making – from concept research and material development to the execution of the show – in a comprehensive way, just like Miyake did. For this collection, we made a series called ‘Torso’, where we went through the process of making torsos out of clay by ourselves and then translating them into garment forms, each to be made with a single piece of fabric, with the intention to explore original clothing [that is] like soft sculptures worn on the body. 

W*: Tell me a little bit more about this idea of sculpture in the collection – how does this feature in the garments?

SK: We wanted to work with sculptures, not only the idea but the actual creative process of sculpting, because we believe that working in a creative field other than clothing design and with a different medium allows us to develop original ideas and forms. For this collection, we imagined garments that are alive and breathing like soft sculptures. Like our sculptor counterparts who all have their takes on what a torso is, we too explore the idea of body and its relationship with a piece of clothing.

W*: There were some technical fabrics which were new for the brand this season. Can you tell me about them, and how they feature in the collection?

SK: The knit series ‘Linkage’ and ‘Assemblage’ employ a technology that produces a seamless knit garment from the machine, finished and ready to wear without additional sewing. While the technology itself is not new, the way we worked with the knit engineers to explore new and creative use of the technology is original, where we created garments that each integrate a variety of knit structures. At the show, the models and the dancers conveyed a sense of liveliness in knit garments like breathing sculptures, as they bounded and danced on the stage.

W*: Why did you choose to have dancers at the show? 

SK: The idea of a wearer’s body is what underlies [what] we do at Issey Miyake. For the finale, the idea was to convey this sense of physicality – something that is sensuous and primitive – through dancers wearing garments in colours of a variety of skin tones, as they dance against a backdrop of dawning daylight. With this we also wanted to, as written in the quote on the washi, bring a sense of joy and hope to the audience.

W*: Tell me a bit more about this idea of joy and hope – as well as playfulness, which you mentioned in the quotation you released prior to the show. How did these ideas figure in the collection itself?

SK: We design and make garments for a sense of ease, and it is this sense of ease that we believe brings about joy. Playfulness can be present in the design and making of a garment itself, like how we play with many knit structures in the ‘Linkage’ and ‘Assemblage’ series and how they seemed to prompt the models and dancers to move and bound around. 

Playfulness can also lead to wonder. It is about designing and making a garment that does not look one, especially when laid flat, and it is only the moment when you pick the garment up and put it on that you become aware of it being wearable. 

isseymiyake.com

As part of the October 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, guest editor Giorgio Armani reflected on the creative inspirations – among them Pierre Chareau’s architecture, Issey Miyake’s fashion, and Sarah Moon’s images of ‘tough delicacy’ – which collectively shaped his vision of modernity.

‘To be part of something for yourself, to not join movements, to cultivate your own aesthetic without being tempted by the trifles of the moment: it’s a sort of calm, serene heroism,’ he said of Giorgio Morandi – one of his picks – a statement which could apply to any of the ten creatives, or indeed Mr Armani himself.

Here, in the wake of the designer’s passing, we revisit the story, which pays odes to artists across eras, from architectural trailblazers to beloved collaborators.

Giorgio Armani on his creative inspirations

Sarah Moon

‘The years of my professional beginnings – the 1970s – are a time I remember not with nostalgia but with energy: the change was overwhelming and evident, and it ran through all segments of society. I myself was swept up in it, using my work to contribute to what was changing in the female world. Among the most interesting magazines of the time I remember Nova, which had a heavy focus on emancipation. I was particularly struck by the work of a young photographer who would later become my friend and whose work I would showcase at Silos: Sarah Moon. In her early shots, the mixture of romantic yearning and strength is striking. Sarah imagined a new woman, free of any preconceptions and belief systems, but who still managed to create an aura of magnetic fragility around her. That tough delicacy still inspires me today.’

Tadao Ando

‘Tadao Ando is, in my opinion, the absolute master of contemporary architecture. His constructions made of solids and voids – in which the relationship with the environment and nature is always so important – seem to me to be the spatial transposition of haikus: like verses that associate words and ideas in a fulminating spirit of synthesis, Ando’s architecture resolves complex elements with the utmost compositional simplicity. I was able to appreciate his meticulousness and sensitivity first hand, having collaborated with him on Armani/Teatro. Tadao and I share a deep love for nature, which becomes absolute respect. His lesson is one of precision and dedication: like me, he is self-taught in a profession that has made him successful, and he has worked hard to make his visions a reality.’

Giorgio Morandi

‘To be part of something for yourself, to not join movements, to cultivate your own aesthetic without being tempted by the trifles of the moment: it’s a sort of calm, serene heroism that I learned from Giorgio Morandi, one of my favourite Italian artists. A heroism that I share. He is a truly extraordinary case of an isolated painter, with very little contact with other masters of the time. He is also an extraordinary case of an artist who practically painted almost exclusively the same subjects: bottles, vases, coffee pots, flowers, bowls and landscapes – always staying in the same room where he lived all his life. What touches me about Morandi is his palette: neutral and melancholic yet full of subtle, infinite modulations; and then his ability to simplify forms, to find just a few essential elements. His paintings are calm and reflective, both characteristics of the most exciting art.’

Jean Cocteau

‘Director, screenwriter, painter, playwright, writer, poet: I appreciate Jean Cocteau’s legendary yet almost elusive character. Everyone knows his name, but without linking it to a particular expression of his art. Many have read Les Enfants Terribles, some have seen The Blood of a Poet (1930) or Beauty and the Beast (1946); others are struck by his magnificent drawings, which are so simple yet erotic. I like his idea of ‘comprehensive art’, mixing words, painting, music and dance. He called everything, as a whole, ‘poetry’ – and this is no different from my way of understanding fashion, linking it to living and experiencing everything, to dwelling, and even to eating. I’ve always been struck by his sensitivity, his avant-garde style with roots in classicism, his ability to transport elements of the ordinary into different contexts to show them from another perspective.’

Pierre Chareau

‘The modern movement profoundly marked the aesthetics of the 20th century, and Pierre Chareau was one of its pioneers. My favourite project of his – which is also his best known – is the Maison de Verre on Rue Saint-Guillaume in Paris, which he constructed in collaboration with Bernard Bijvoet and Louis Dalbet: a masterpiece of simplicity and modularity, with its translucent glass façade and various rooms that can be divided by sliding and rotating screens in glass, sheet metal and perforated metal. The fluidity of this space is truly astounding: an architectural design reminiscent of a mechanical ballet. What I admire about Chareau is his ability to give a new sense to the entire space with just a few movements, and also the fact that he is essentially famous for a single project.’

Coco Chanel

‘The true fashion revolutionaries of the 20th century were all women, and I’m not surprised: a woman who creates women’s clothes has an understanding of their bodies, as well as of their roles, that a man can hardly achieve. I appreciate Jeanne Lanvin as much as Madeleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli, but my favourite remains Coco Chanel, whom I consider the inventor of a modern way of dressing and thus, by translation, of the contemporary woman. The liberation of the female wardrobe started with her, and this should not be forgotten. From Chanel, I learned the importance of the material, and to drop all preconceptions: her famous jersey jackets were, in fact, initially made from the same fabric as men’s underwear. Here, this freedom is a great stimulus, a great inspiration. Add on top of that the ability to synthesise; in other words, to work with just a few colours and a few details, reiterated with the utmost subtlety.’

Jean-Michel Frank

‘Jean-Michel Frank’s ability to speak to modernity and timeless classicism is unrivalled. His interior design exemplifies the absolute absence of the superfluous, the focus on the essential. It remains unparalleled for me. His style was so pure that it deserved the definition ‘luxury of the mind’, and was a true celebration of empty space in an era when excessive grandeur, overloaded environments, and formulaic Baroque-ism predominated instead. To call him a minimalist, however, would not be doing him any justice. Frank certainly loved whites and neutrals, but his work was multidimensional, with an absolute focus on matter. I find his idea of subtraction infinitely inspiring and, from a personal point of view, I also admire the fact that he wore a grey suit as a uniform, just as I do with my blue T-shirt.’

Issey Miyake

‘Clothes like flying saucers, dresses cut from a single piece of fabric, bridges stretched between the ancestral past and the galactic future, and then the ever-inventive use of pleating: Issey Miyake’s work was full of poetry, and it tended towards a constant search for functionality – an aspect on which not all designers focus today. I’ve never hidden my passion for Japanese designers, for their quest for simplicity, for their always progressive and fresh vision of the relationship between clothing and the body. Miyake is the one I feel the closest to, specifically because of his attention to people. The clothes he created only come to life once they are worn, and they change from one person to another, following their way of being and behaving. This is what I myself try to do, because I never forget that if the first thing you notice about a person is their clothes, then the designer has made a mistake.’

Henri Matisse

‘Shape, colour, immediacy: Henri Matisse’s Blue Nudes, a series of collages made with paper cut-outs, is an incredible example of the spirit of synthesis that characterises great artists. These are works in which rhythm and sensuality are magnetic, with a touch of blue that makes them electrifying. I find it particularly inspiring that this joyful, triumphant ode to life was created by Matisse when he was already an old man, using scissors instead of a paintbrush. Instead of surrendering to physical decline, he found inspiration and renewed energy in his art, creating brilliant, striking and large works. A thought in which I find myself today more than ever: creativity truly has no age.’

Eileen Gray

‘A mysterious trailblazer, Eileen Gray was an elusive figure, both as a woman and as a designer. Even Le Corbusier looked up to her. I often think of her unique way of designing spaces and the elements that adorn them. She used a pure yet never cold language that gave absolute prominence to matter. But I also think of the free way she experienced femininity. This came back to mind recently because the Galerie Jean Désert, which she had opened in Paris with Jean Badovici, was opposite the Salle Pleyel, where I showcased my Privé collection. From her, I learned the balance between solids and voids, between curves and straight lines: the ‘Bibendum’ chair and the ‘E 1027’ coffee table are unforgettable in this sense, as is the E 1027 maison en bord de mer in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a masterpiece of balance and surprise.’

A version of this article appeared in the October 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

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Issey Miyake, designer and founder of the Miyake Design Studio and the Issey Miyake Group, has passed away aged 84. In a statement released by his eponymous brand this morning, it was announced that Miyake died in Tokyo on 5 August 2022, surrounded by close friends and associates. The cause of death was hepatocellular carcinoma.

Issey Miyake’s work was defined by a dynamic approach to design, which combined boundary-pushing technical innovation with a deft use of colour and silhouette. His pieces were often sculptural in shape, Miyake manipulating fabric into variously dramatic forms, from bouncing ‘flying saucers’ of signature polyester micro-pleats to garments which, inspired by the art of origami, could fold entirely flat in a moment. ‘The body, the fabric covering it and a comfortable relationship between the two,’ Miyake said of the focus of his work, which despite an avant-garde approach was instilled with a feeling of pragmatism and utility (he preferred the word ‘clothing’ to ‘fashion’).

Born in 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan, Miyake was seven years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city in 1945, an event he witnessed but rarely discussed (‘when I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience,’ Miyake wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times in 2009). In 1965, he graduated from the Tama Art University in Tokyo after studying graphic design; that same year he travelled to Paris – three months after fellow pioneering Japanese designer Kenzo Takada – where he would study dressmaking and tailoring at l’École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (Takada studied the course alongside him). As part of the programme, Miyake became an apprentice at Guy Laroche and Givenchy, working under the Parisian houses’ eponymous founders to create original sketches of the collections. 

It was a journey to New York, though, in the late 1960s that was perhaps most influential in the founding of his label; there, he worked under American designer Geoffrey Beene, while also being immersed in the world of art, meeting Christo and Robert Rauschenberg (art would intersect with Miyake’s work throughout his career, as he collaborated with various artists and institutions, including Paris’ Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain and The National Art Center, Tokyo). With new energy, he returned to Tokyo in 1970 and founded the Miyake Design Studio, showing his first collection in 1971 in New York. Notably, the collection featured tattoo-style prints of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who had died the previous autumn, created by textile designer and artist Makiko Minagawa (who later joined the Miyake studio).

In 1973, Miyake moved his runway presentations to Paris, where he would continue to show his collections twice a year during his lifetime. ‘East meets West’ is how he defined this cross-continental approach, fascinated at once by the richness and pragmatism of Japanese craft, Western youth culture, and the flair of European couture (in particular, he drew inspiration from French couturiers Madeleine Vionnet and Madame Grés, the latter known for her own pleated garments). In 1978, Miyake released a book titled East meets West – then the only retrospective of a living designer – introduced by American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. ‘Paris has a heart for those who are productive, tasteful, and who give the utmost from their hearts and minds,’ she wrote. ‘Issey has been most welcome in Paris.’ 

In his wake, a slew of other Japanese designers chose to work in Tokyo and show collections in Paris, notably Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, who would go on to become the designer’s contemporaries. Numerous other designers, from Giorgio Armani to Jonathan Anderson, have noted Miyake’s influence on their own work. Famously, Miyake created the black turtleneck sweater that became the distinct uniform of Apple’s Steve Jobs. 

Now spanning numerous labels under the umbrella of the Issey Miyake Group – including Pleats Please Issey Miyake, Bao Bao Issey Miyake, 132 5 Issey Miyake, among others – Miyake’s work remains immortalised by the great image-makers of his time. Most notably, American photographer Irving Penn, whom the designer met in 1983. Though Penn never attended Miyake’s shows, and Miyake never attended the photographer’s shoots, the resulting images encapsulate the essence of the brand in its purest form: bodies in movement, vivid textures, undulating forms.

‘Without Penn’s guidance, I probably could not have continued to find new themes with which to challenge myself, nor could I have arrived at new solutions,’ said Miyake of the unique collaboration, which was celebrated with an exhibition ‘Irving Penn and Issey Miyake: Visual Dialogue’ at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo in 2011. Numerous other exhibitions have celebrated Miyake’s work, including ‘Is Fashion Modern?’ at MoMA, New York; ‘Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology’ at the Metropolitan Museum, New York; and ‘Radical Fashion’ at the V&A, London; as well as a major retrospective at The National Art Center, Tokyo. 

Since 2020, the various collections in the Issey Miyake Group have been designed by Satoshi Kondo, who will continue as artistic director. ‘It’s important to work with people who are not necessarily from fashion or design worlds,’ Kondo told Wallpaper* on his appointment in 2020. ‘I remember Mr Miyake telling me to look at many, many things, not just related to my work but on a larger scale. We design clothes – but the message goes beyond fashion.’

Multiple iterations of Bao Bao Issey Miyake’s uniquely recognisable accessories – known for their triangular structure and futuristic aesthetic – have been offered by the innovative Japanese brand since 2000, when the line was first launched under Pleats Please Issey Miyake (in 2010, it became its own standalone brand). 

The latest addition to the Bao Bao Issey Miyake family provides perhaps its most technologically advanced approach to the design concept yet. Titled ‘Dazzle’, the new series of tote bags are composed from puzzle piece-like ‘units’ that are slotted together to create theoretically endless combinations (the original aim of Bao Bao Issey Miyake was to create accessories with ‘infinite versatile shapes’).

High-precision design: ‘Dazzle’ by Bao Bao Issey Miyake

These translucent polypropylene units, each identical in shape, are created using a high-precision injection moulding technique (Bao Bao Issey Miyake notes that such is the level of the machinery used, micron-level adjustments can be made to the geometric designs). The pieces are tested together in various forms, ensuring ‘optimum strength and mobility’; indeed, despite a seemingly structured exterior, the bag has a feeling of lightness and remains slouchy in shape like its fabric counterparts. 

‘The unique scalability of the material allows each bag to create infinite shapes, to be flexible, and to be functional as an enduring accessory,’ says the brand of the ‘radical’ design, which it describes as ‘aesthetically contemporary, crafted to suit the ever-diversifying and ever-changing trends of today’.

Bao Bao Issey Miyake sees the future of the ‘Dazzle’ series as one whereby singular pieces can be replaced after damage or wear – instead of replacing the entire bag – while also being customisable (this service was only available in Japan for a limited period during April and May, where unique colour combinations could be pre-ordered and custom-created by the brand).

For now, the ‘Dazzle’ series receives its European premiere in London’s Selfridges, available now both in the department store’s accessories hall and online. Colours, each translucent in appearance, span shades of cool grey, pale blue and orange.

INFORMATION

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Mid-pandemic and post-Brexit, most of us have become far more familiar with the ins-and-outs of our postal service. Bouts at home have led to an appetite for online purchases, a new allure in Amazon Prime and the fleeting adrenaline rush of opening an anticipated parcel. It's a fitting metaphor for our times that Glenn Martens held Y/Project's A/W 2022 show at Paris Fashion Week Men's in the cavernous warehouse of a DPD depot, where delivery vans could be seen lined up, ready to roll out packages to Parisian homes, straight from the catwalk. 

Louis Vuitton's A/W 2022 show – the final chapter of men's artistic director Virgil Abloh's bildungsroman – had more of a fairytale flourish, with the label erecting a quintessential surburban street lined with sky blue ‘dream houses', with red rooftops and inviting, warmly-lit windows. Virgil Abloh's first show for the Parisian maison eight collections ago, featured a rainbow catwalk recalling The Wizard of Oz's Yellow Brick Road, a symbol of a fairytale path about to be trodden, traced by not only Abloh's footsteps, but those of his diverse collaborators. This emotive setting, which showcased Abloh's final collection for the brand, completed by Vuitton's design team after his tragic passing in November 2021, was an emotive emblem of a dream fulfilled, the final familial location of a boyhood dream, which ended with him joining one of the world's most prestigious luxury brands. And it was journey marked over eight collections by coming-of-age symbols: a bouncy castle, a build-your-own-kite kit, a paper aeroplane. 

Elsewhere, influences on the A/W 2022 menswear season in Paris were encyclopedic, including surrealism and sleaze, New Wave cinema, and chronophotography. But the city was not exempt from the complications suffered by the schedules at Pitti and in Milan, in the wake of rising Omicron infections in Europe, with the week in the French capital being marked by a quieter presence, with collections presented both physically and digitally. Still, the season saw the first Paris runway show of London designer Bianca Saunders, and welcomed womenswear shows from Paco Rabanne, Y/Project and Alaïa. Despite the circumstances, a swathe of A-listers were still in attendance - just look to the front row of Nigo's debut show for Kenzo, flanked by Pharrell Williams, Tyler, the Creator, Ye and Julia Fox. Over the week, they were treated to Rick Owen's riff on sleaze; elfin-inspired accessories; and a celebration of slouch and surrealism. And in this special report, we've collected the very best highlights from Paris Fashion Week men's A/W 2022.

Paris Fashion Week men’s A/W 2022: 9 key takeaways

1. Embrace the eclectic

There was plenty of room for personal interpretation on the A/W 2022 catwalks, as designers embraced eclectic flourishes and finishes. At Acne Studios, founder Jonny Johansson took inspiration from a cartoonish floral button, the foundation of the brand's collection, resulting in a fancy dress box of designs, like sequinned shirting and textural abstract knits, patchworked trousers and crushed velvet blazers. For Bluemarble's Anthony Alvarez – who presented his debut show on the Paris schedule – the New York-born designer, who has Fillipino, Spanish and Corsican heritage, went on a whistle top world tour, drawing inspiration from the sails of Filliipino vinta boats, and seeming to stop off at skateparks, snowboarding runs and hippy trails. Models sported a mix of bright patchwork jackets, tie-dye track tops, frilled pyjama shirts, and baggy jeans, worn with fake fur-sprouting slip-ons, pointed knitted hats and reflective sports sunglasses.

2. Make mine a large

If Milan Fashion Week Men's made a case for large-scale silhouettes, Paris pumped up their proportions. Tel Aviv-based Hed Mayner was taken by ‘capricous' silhouettes, that provide space between the wearer and clothing, the wearer and us. A fine grey chalk stripe double-breasted blazer, with voluminous slouch-shouldered proportions, was paired with a slim trouser, and a puffy, pointed-lapel tan leather coat layered with pants which would pool on the pavement. Technical ponchos offered tent-like protection. And quilted Liberty print scarves swathed the body.

3. Swat up on your cinema and surrealism

‘Going along the streets of Nottingham, a rather dark town, I was struck by this really bright Jean-Luc Goddard film poster,' explained Paul Smith, in a collection preview of the cinematic New Wave tones that inspired his A/W 2022 offering. The designer – who presented a live collection film, streamed from Paris' Chamber of Commerce – thought back to the directors that inspired him in the Sixties, referencing not just Goddard, but Fellini and François Truffaut. ‘With Goddard, you might have a shot with no colour, juxtaposed by a red balloon,' Smith said of the bold Technicolour that peppered the collection, which featured raspberry tailoring, glitch-print bowling shirts and checked outerwear. A chevron motif, seen in quilted coats and intarsia knitwear, nodded to the zig-zag floor in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, while outerwear silhouettes evoked the ‘Director's jackets' that Smith used to sell in the early Eighties. Smith even created his own Hollywood starlet print - featuring the visage of a woman tesselated across overcoats and shirting.

‘What is real today? Perfection is fabricated, imperfection is erased, illusion and displacement are the coordinates,' read the opening lines of the Loewe press release – which accompanied a collection that riffed on ‘nonsensical' silhouettes, twisted, shrunken and surrealist shapes, and dramatic reinterpretations of archetypal wardrope pieces. T-shirts and shorts protuded with hula-hoop proportions; transparent coats, seemingly made of rubber, were imagined in see-through leather, or featured an imprint of a buttock in golden paint; outerwear was punctured with metal sink strainers; t-shirts and body suits were printed with trompe l'oeil figures. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has certainly catalysed questions regarding reality, as many of us have hunkered down inside, spending more time online, honing our digital personalities. And at Loewe, things are not what they seem. A Flamenco bag has a bottom formed from a conch shell or is shaped into a slouchy boot. Jackets are worn as shorts, knitted roll necks are rendered impossibly impractical, with inbuilt gloves swathed in dangling streamers.

4. Elf yourself!

Admitedly, an unexpected accessory trend on the Paris catwalks was unveiled: an intriuge in elf-like footwear. At Acne Studios, this came courtesy of beaked toe fishing boot. Ditto seen at Y/Project, with the brand's signature slouched thigh-high boots finished with a gently curling toe. Hed Mayner also made a case for a gnomic buckled shoe. Yes, a literal toe-curling trend. 

5. Take note of tapestries

At the crux of Virgil Abloh's design DNA was a desire to reframe codes and symbols, bring new value to cultural, social and political signifiers, and design with a boyish charm, untampered by adulthood. For his final A/W 2022 show for Vuitton – Abloh had sought to bring new life to two paintings, The Painter's Studio (1855), by realist Gustave Courbet, and 1914's Souvenir d’Italie by surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. These were translated into rich tapestried silhouettes, like trenchcoats, cargo pants and hoodies, in an aim to cement Abloh's continued exploration of ‘originality, provenance, reference and self-reference'.

Hermès' Véronique Nichanian was also taken with the symbolism of tapestry, staging the French maison's A/W 2022 show at the Mobilier National in Paris, against a series of resplendent wall hangings. She was fascinated by the idea of giving them new character, by models assimilating with their backdrop, becoming ‘part of the landscape in which the collection’s energy unfurls, and in which figures and clothing come into their own.' Against these tapestries, Nichanian created dandyish silhouettes, more rooted in a modern elegance and authenticity than dandyish figures of the past, typified by Beau Brummell or defined by Baudelaire, sporting trenchcoats in crispy technical canvas, printed silkscreen printed blousons, compact cotton serge cargo pants and driving jackets in Porosus crocodile.

6. Collaboration is key

In his exploration of archetypal silhouettes, Y/Project's Glenn Martens has reinterpreted the classic designs of a host of brands, including Ugg, Fila and Canada Goose. On the A/W 2022 runway, the brand unveiled its latest collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier. The latter has enlisted Martens to explore his famed silhouettes, a profject which has already seen Sacai's Chitose Abe take up the roving seasonal creative director role. Martens transformed the cult trompe-l’œil prints from Gaultier's S/S 1996 collection (the original body illusion pieces pop-up on 1st Dibs and Vestiaire Collective), which have become cult items in Gen-Z's obsession with Nineties fashion, into figurative nipple and bare-chest revealing vests, dresses and tailoring.  

Dior also added another hotly-hyped accessory to its collaborative cannon, in its team up with Birkenstock. The latter German footwear brand, which in recent years has celebrated sellout ‘1774' collaborations with luxury brands like Jil Sander, Valentino and Proenza Schouler, unveiled new styles on Dior's catwalk, riffing on the signature Boston and Tokio mule. Dior's haute grey and black styles in suede and felt – which complemented the comfort-focused hues in its A/W 2022 collection – have a robust rubber upper, industrial hardware buckle and feature delicate floral embroidery. After all, Monsieur Dior himself was famously green-fingered.

7. A lightbulb moment

Paint tin bags at Louis Vuitton; totes made from framed still life paintings at Casablanca; sink basket details at Loewe: everyday items were used to transform A/W 2022's silhouettes. Rick Owens had a lightbult moment, looking to the illuminated installations of American minimalist artist Dan Flavin, creating antler-like demonic headpieces, which also nodded to the helmets of Ancient Egyptian gods, and illuminated the designer's take on male sleaze. Owen's idiosyncratically dark collection, which looked to the underbelly of the male pysche, featured torso-exposing industrial chanmail vests, ballooning padded gilets that turned into face-concealing balaclavas, strong Pagoda-shouldered jackets and glam rock platform boots. The look was heavy and hardcore, riffing on draped Couture shapes and sportswear, a decadent dive into Owen's apocalyptic aesthetic. 

Our physical lives have become inextricably linked to the digital, and it's a point that JW Anderson illuminated at Loewe, with silhouettes that shone on the runway with LED lighting. Body suits, wool coats and trenchcoats twinkled with fairy lights, the sleeves of double-breasted coats were illuminated with a warm glow, and conch shell accessories shone with light. Illumination was projected from the body, like a phone constantly lighting up with notifcations from a pocket.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake was also inspired by illimunation for autumn. With a collection film, directed by Kyotaro Hayashi, the Japanese brand looked at the structure of a tent as its inspiration. One element of the offering, ‘Lantern', presented pastel-drawn printed silhouettes inspired by a bulb glowing from inside a tent, featuring ponchos and relaxed suiting with abstract patterns in orange and ocean blue.

8. Wave ‘hello' to womenswear

9. And...relax!

There was a sublime softness to silhouettes on the A/W 2022 runway, with brands taking some of that working from home hygge into the upcoming season. At Dior, Kim Jones looked to the lineage of Monsieur Dior – whose birthday on 21 January was the same date as the brand's show – bringing a sublime insouciance to its founder's famed 1947 Bar Jacket silhouette, imagined in seemingly chalk-etched tweeds, Prince of Wales check and even stone-wash denim. Jones also celebrated the maison's most loved hue – trianon grey – and teamed pared-back tailoring with slouchy trackpants in grey marl, chocolate and snowy white. The brand's Birkenstock collaborated cemented the collection's laid-back, luxurious lilt. 

Jil Sander also used the word ‘comfort' to describe its A/W 2022 offering, a luxurious, fabrication-focused collection, featuring enveloping suede and Japanese wool coats which secured around the waist with silk scarves, or swathed the body in mohair leopard print and striped tweed. Lucie and Lukie Meier employed artisanal flourishes, accenting tailoring with scarves and soft vests in floral crochet velvet and bringing flashes of bold colour in orange and turqouise.

Seventeen months after it was originally slated to take place – in April 2020, when it was postponed because of the pandemic – Salone del Mobile once again graced the streets of Milano. While many of the usual suspects – Prada, Fendi, Marni, Louis Vuitton – opted to sit this Supersalone out, there was no less innovation to be found. Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele made a cartoleria pop-up complete with a mouse hole; Dior gathered 17 of the most esteemed artists in the world to interpret its iconic ‘Medallion’ chair; Giorgio Armani gave us spaghetti measurers and rolling pins; while Hermès crafted a world of fine fabric canopies. Here is the Wallpaper* edit of the best fashion brands at Salone del Mobile 2021.

Fashion brands at Salone del Mobile 2021

Dior

Dior took over the newly refurbished Palazzo Citterio to unveil its ‘Medallion’ chair project. As guests mingled in the Dior-ified gardens, in the concrete depths of the basement, 17 artists – including India Mahdavi, Joy de Rohan Chabot, Sam Baron and Khaled El Mays – presented their interpretation of the Louis XVI-style seat that Monsieur Dior chose as one of the interior emblems of his fashion house on Avenue Montaigne in Paris back in the mid-1940s. The collective result was a reminder of the contemporaneous spirit of the fashion house and its enduring codes. Speaking about the project as well as her own approach, Mahdavi told Wallpaper*: ‘Beauty comes from the strength of the lot; they’re separate but connected and it’s that togetherness that I like.'

Hermès

Staged at La Pelota, Hermès enlisted Hervé Sauvage on set design to create five hand-painted structures in which to house the Paris-based brand’s collection. Designed to celebrate the tension between different textures, guests were invited to crunch around the softly lit space with sand underfoot, a detail which emphasised the raw nature of each room’s curated contents. Inside the imposing constructions sat pieces ‘designed to be touched': its ‘Sillage’ armchair made from recycled paper fibres; its elm and calfskin jewellery boxes; the enamelled copper ceramics from its ‘Sialk’ collection; and cashmere blankets hoisted on wooden poles. With Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Antonio Fernandez Ros and Rogelio Sosa behind the sound design, it became a sensory homage to the physicality of craftsmanship.

Tod’s

Tod’s enlisted New Jersey-based artist Willie Cole for its installation at its Montenapoleone flagship. The contemporary artist, who has carved out a reputation for using discarded domestic items such as hairdryers and irons during his five-decade career, was given free rein in the Tod’s factory to make three sculptures using leftover materials from the production line. The result was a chair, a sofa and a sculpture using the uppers of the brand’s signature driving shoes. ‘The thing that interests me is recycling beyond sanitation,' Cole told Wallpaper*. ‘My work is all about “play”.’ To complement his creations, the brand launched its limited-edition ‘Mosaic’ collection, which uses a traditional patchwork technique, and the offcuts from its mainline collections.

Valextra

Valextra teamed with its neighbour Tom Dixon on a project that saw the brand stage Dixon’s ten-piece ‘Black Light’ exhibition in its Via Manzoni flagship. For his installation of ten huge light sculptures, Dixon took his cues from Milanese masters including Gio Ponti, Achilles Castiglioni and Ettore Sottsass. For its part, Valextra looked to the traditional Italian art technique of chiaroscuro – meaning to contrast light and shade – to create a collection of the same name that juxtaposed its multidimensional leathers in four of its iconic handbags: the ‘Iside’, the ‘Tric Trac’, the ‘Bucket’ and the ‘Brera’. The result saw two disciplines come together, said Valextra CEO Xavier Rougeaux, to ‘pay homage to Milan, its masters and celebrate the symbiosis between design and urban craft’.

Gucci

Alessandro Michele created every stationery aficionado’s nirvana with his Gucci Cartoleria pop-up on Via Manzoni, which celebrated the lauch of the Florentine brand's Lifestyle collection. A bona fide treasure trove of pencils, pens, notebooks, pencil cases, paperweights and board games (catnip for early-bird Christmas shoppers when they launch online this week), the space was an ode to the small Italian shops of Michele’s childhood. ‘I imagined a small cabinet of curiosities, a Wunderkammer, like the cave of Ali Baba, that could accommodate these everyday objects and return them to a fairy-tale dimension,' he explained. In his signature whimsical style, Michele incorporated an overhead upside-down train track, a sensor-activated chess set, and a mouse hole complete with a miniature living room at foot level. It was conceived, he said, to restore a sense of wonder to everyday life – and it did.

Armani Casa

Things you now need that you didn’t know you needed ten seconds ago: an Armani rolling pin, spaghetti measurer and chopping board. For his Armani/Casa 2021 collection, Giorgio Armani wanted to ‘express all the dimensions of the concept of “living at home”’, hence the handy additions to a collection that caters to spending lots of time in it. The brand’s first desk chair and a huge new eight-seater square table are joined by an internally lit room divider and a new limited-edition cylindrical bar cabinet, all making the home user-friendly in the most luxurious – aka the most Armani – of ways. He’s considered the garden, too. The ‘Robespierre’ barbeque set, the ‘Rovo’ gardening bag (complete with wooden-handled tools) and the ‘Regni’ cashmere and wool rug that doubles as a chess board with supersized leather pawns take outside living to another level.

Issey Miyake

Issey Miyake staged ‘In The Making’ in its Tokujin Yoshioka-designed Via Bagutta store. Presenting the construction process behind two of the brands under its umbrella, Im Men and A-Poc Able Issey Miyake, it affirmed its longstanding textile-innovation credentials. First up, the ‘Flat’ (whose construction is inspired by 132 5 Issey Miyake) and the ‘Convertible’, which condense into briefcase and crossbody bags and are crafted from the husk of sugar cane. Next up, its ‘Type-I’ project, which involves a process that uses Triporous, a material made from rice husks (100 million tonnes of which are discarded globally every year, the brand pointed out), and achieves a unique shade of black that cannot be done through conventional dyeing techniques. These projects were joined by a presentation of collaborations with Tadanori Yokoo and Fabio Bellotti, both of whom have been working with the brand since the 1970s.

Rick Owens

Rick Owens and Michele Lamy collaborated with Galerie Philia founder Ygaël Attali to engage ten emerging Italian designers to create pieces inspired by Owens’ furniture. ‘My furniture is my couture,’ declared the designer about his one-of-a-kind projects, which here sat alongside the pieces designed in his honour. A marble chair by Pietro Franceschini and a floating glass and brass vase by Agustina Bottini stood opposite a bronze bollard lamp by Owens. Atop Owens’ alabaster and moose-antler ‘Stag T’ side table sat a sculpted brass candleholder by Samuel Costantini, both illuminated by a brass and silicone ‘Howl’ light installation by Morghen. ‘Rick’s work is brutalist, dark and rough and some things here are very soft,’ said Attali. ‘To mix them creates a discussion [between materials] and a dialogue between Rick and the Italian designers.’

Stone Island

Salone’s delay has rendered the fifth installation of Stone Island’s Prototype Research Series, its experimental numbered-garment project, all the more beautiful. The brand experimented by applying a nanometric copper layer through a vapour deposition technique onto a fabric bonded with its signature raso cotton, and made 100 trench coats. The plan was to investigate the natural oxidation characteristics of copper in a fashion context using industrial processes (the first time a fashion brand has used this particular type of technology); the result was a fabric that has a stunning iridescent camouflage-like surface texture but became completely unbonded in the time since the coats were made, the bonding ‘eaten by the same oxidisation', explained creative director Carlo Rivetti; it means the pieces can’t – like previous collections – be sold. ‘This is the unfiltered story of an unfinished research process,’ he added. ‘Each step has taught us important things which will be important for the future, regardless of the goal achieved.’

Kassl Editions x Zara Home

High-street juggernaut Zara Home and indie Amsterdam label Kassl Editions presented their limited-edition homewares collection at the former’s flagship on Corso Venezia. With the first floor devoted entirely to an exhibition to present the tie-up, it made for a bold statement of design democratisation and one for which Kassl Edition’s ‘Pillow’ sofa (originally conceived for Wallpaper’s Re-Made initiative in collaboration with Muller Van Severen) was reinvented. Joined by art prints, flat-weave rugs, reversible mirrors and lacquered wood furniture that can triple as tables, shelves or plinths, the modular collection caters to design enthusiasts on a budget.

La DoubleJ

Supersalone saw La DoubleJ founder JJ Martin ‘activate a hunch and bring back the bat’. Stemming from the themes of spirituality for which the womenswear brand is becoming increasingly known, Martin commissioned the artist JoAnn Tan to help turn the basement of the brand’s new Via San Andrea store into a bat cave-cum-craft installation to celebrate the spirit animal. Martin’s vision came to life through Tan’s suspended bat lamps, made from turned walnut, Italian silk, and Hermès leather on the wings, and which each took one week to complete. The event provided a first opportunity for many to see inside the space, which opened this April, as well as see the brand’s new Miniscalchi homewares collection. Highlights include a set of porcelain plates featuring patterns that first appeared on tableware made for Napoleon Bonaparte’s visit to Verona, here rendered in bubblegum pink (‘because this is La DoubleJ!' laughed Martin), and an extension of the brand’s collaboration with Venetian glassmaker Salviati on smoky sets of liquor glasses.

Versace

Donatella Versace called on Milanese architects Roberto Palomba and Ludovica Serafini to translate Versace’s fashion-house codes for Versace Home in a bid to have a more ‘3D vision of [the] Versace environment’, explained Palomba. Staged in Versace’s Via Durini space, which opened in April, everything hinged on the Greca pattern, which debuted in the A/W 2021 ready-to-wear collection. It manifested here in cushions, bed linen and wallpaper in green, blue, pink and brown. Deliberately less extravagant than Versace Home of old, this collection marks a move towards a clean-lined aesthetic and a focus on details over drama. Symbols synonymous with the house – including the gold safety-pin and Medusa head – arrived as subtle details such as zips and buttons on the new leather ‘Venus’ armchair and buttons on the made-to-share ‘Signature’ sofa. ‘Donatella is the icon for a new generation of women, and we made a house for her to represent her: she wants to hunt, rather than be hunted,’ said Palomba. 

Off-White

Salone may see few brands designing with dorm rooms in mind, but then most brands aren’t Off-White. Creative director Virgil Abloh collaborated with the ceramicist Ginori 1735 on its new homewares collection, which comprises a tea set, serving platters and dinner plates in the Florentine company’s classic white porcelain, all graffitied with Off-White’s tag. ‘This is a collection for the modern dining room – whether formal in a home, a millennial apartment, or simply a dorm room,’ said Abloh of the first instalment of the collaboration (the next will land in 2022). ‘The imposition of the modernity of a logo and graffiti art with the respected house of Ginori 1735 is proof that good design can live on forever.' Studying just got a whole lot more civilised.

Loro Piana

Famed for its deliciously luxurious textiles, Loro Piana looked to the past, the present and the future to create three stories that celebrate fabric for its Salone presentation at its Montenapoleone store. First up it commissioned Gabetti & Isola to create an exclusive version of its iconic ‘Bul-bo’ lamp (originally created in the late 1960s); as the new ‘Bul-bo Soft’, its base is covered in cashmere and contrasting Altai wool fabric. Next up, an interpretation of the classic director’s chair by Exteta and Paola Navone-Studio Otto, which has resulted in the ‘Delight’ chairs, covered in an outdoor fabric conceived by Loro Piana that is light, salt-, chlorine- and fungus-resistant. And finally, there’s the ‘Palm Duet’ chaise longue, a creation by Raphael Navot made exclusively for Loro Piana and upholstered in Cashfur, a novel fabric made from combining cashmere and silk on circular knitting looms.

Etro

After the best part of 18 months spent at home, it’s little surprise that bar cabinets have made a celebrated return. Etro’s new offering, the ‘Rajan’, is equipped with bronze glass and lined in a champagne paisley print (naturally). It forms one of the elements of the brand’s ‘Intimate Dining' collection on display at its Via Pontaccio store, where it is joined by its new ‘Klee’ round dining table, complete with a dinner-party friendly lazy Susan; the suitably sumptuous ‘Kush’ armchair, which is studded in gold; and the ‘McKenzie’ glass lamps, which drop like jewels from the ceiling.

Missoni

Missoni had a three-fold presence across the city. Its Via Sant’Andrea boutique hosted its Virgila Soft loungers and circular Art Glass tables. On display at its Brera HQ was its new collection of Miss Wood chairs - rounded wooden sculptures which have been polished and painted in degrade pastel hues so to appear almost plastic in their structure - and its new Grandma armchair suite featuring curved Walnut arms and upholstered in five variants of its famed zigzag textile. But it was at the Universita Statale di Milano where the world of Missoni Home came to life: modular outdoor sofas and square poufs covered in its water-repellent Andalusia stripe stood in the shadow of a huge Missoni vase covered in an intricate mosaic by the famed Venetian furnace Orsoni Venezia 1888. Creative Director Rosita Missoni, who turns 90 in November, told Wallpaper* that it was a joy to be designing items that allow people to enjoy being outdoors, something she has personally relished since the start of the pandemic.

Sunnei

Milan-based Sunnei partnered with its fellow Milanese brand and long-term collaborators NM3 on an installation outside its Via Vela flagship to celebrate the Super Salone. The cuboid metallic seating structure features a maple tree in the centre and was designed to bring the inside out, creating a tranquil oasis in the heart of Milan’s urban centre – in signature low-key-chic Sunnei style. The design duo behind the brand, Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, used the occasion as an opportunity to spruce up their collection space too, where they presented their autumn/winter 2021 collection, AKA the uniform of Milan’s design-centric cool crowd.

Roberto Cavalli

Taking its leave from its new designer Fausto Puglisi’s first menswear collection for the house in June, the Roberto Cavalli Home collection on display at its Via Montenapoleone flagship was all about optimum glam (before arriving at the house, Puglisi was famed for dressing Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, so no surprise there). The result was two threads: the new Wild Dining and the Wild Suite. Brushed bronze tables, brass chandeliers and a bookshelf panelled in Wild Tiger fabric were met with animal-print bed linen, silk pillow cases and black leather bed frames, while the home office gets a suitably decadent update with a jewel-handled gold desk. 

Berluti

Berluti enlisted the talents of Spanish furniture designer Jorge Penadés to repurpose leather offcuts from its ready-to-wear collections to create three pieces of furniture that were unveiled in its new Montenapoleone flagship. After gathering a mound of multicoloured pieces, Penadés created what he has coined “Structural Skin”; it’s a wood-like structure that saw him compress the leather with natural glue in a bespoke mould and leave them to dry for weeks before cutting and sanding them down. Taking on a rock-like appearance similar to that of agate, his creation has formed the legs for a glass and steel table, the base of a table lamp, and keyring cords. Plans are to produce them in a numbered and limited-edition series, with only five of each available.

Issey Miyake Parfums unveils its latest female fragrance, A Drop d’Issey, with a bottle created by American designer (and former Wallpaper* Handmade contributor) Todd Bracher.

Issey Miyake Parfums and Todd Bracher 

It may come as a surprise that fashion designer Issey Miyake, creator of the slouchy pleats that have become the go-to uniform for the culture biz elite, loves a pun. 

Miyake’s first fragrance, L’Eau d'Issey, is a homonym for l'odyssée in French, or ‘odyssey’ in English. His 2009 release, A Scent by Issey Miyake, could also be read as ‘ascent by Issey Miyake’. This latest scent is A Drop – aka ‘a launch’ – of Issey Miyake perfume. It is also, thanks to Bracher, an actual drop of perfume, with a round glass bottle that can be cradled in the hand like a water droplet. 

A Drop d'Issey is the third bottle that Bracher has created for Miyake, and the pair are clearly well matched. For both, design should be equally ergonomic and elegant, innovative but not so trend-driven that it falls out of fashion. As Bracher told us, ‘the work is not shrouded in shape, or colours, or patterns. The result is exposed. Honest.’ 

Place a piece of Miyake’s ultra-chic, ultra-comfy pleated clothing next to one of Bracher’s minimal but unforgettable designs for Georg Jensen and you'll see the connection. 

A Drop d’Issey Miyake: the perfume 

Issey Miyake revolutionised fragrance in 1992 with the launch of L'Eau d'Issey. The first ‘aquatic floral’ fragrance for women, it was inspired by the purity of water infused with notes of lotus and rose. Compared to the heady, flavour-saturated scents of the 1980s and early 1990s, L'Eau d’Issey was a breath of fresh air and would prove to be the olfactory equivalent to the era's minimalist aesthetic. 

A Drop d'Issey is not as impactful as its predecessor, but it carries on the brand’s tradition for watery florals. Perfumer Ane Ayo tried to capture the essence of a water droplet falling off a lilac petal by infusing lilac accord with notes orange blossom and an almond milk accord. It's a gentle, clean fragrance, well suited to those who prefer to go light on perfume. 

Bracher’s bottle design

‘My approach was twofold,’ says Bracher about the process behind his droplet-shaped bottle design, which is intended to lie on its side rather than stand upright on the dressing table. ‘Firstly, giving a unique experience by how the bottle is cupped in hand, providing for more intimate interaction.

‘Secondly, this “lay down” approach allowed me to reduce the material for the bottle by about 10 per cent, which saves on cost while eliminating 10 per cent of the total footprint the entire Drop collection will have in our world.’

It was key for Bracher that the design have as little environmental impact as possible. ‘The glass [for the bottle] is 100 per cent recycled,' he says.

As for the packaging, where, typically ‘much of the environmental strain is felt’, he adds, ‘this new approach made for a smaller outer box, which means more can be transported at once, and more can stock a shelf for less wholesale reordering and shipping.’

The future of perfume packaging 

Bracher hopes the move towards more sustainable practices will extend throughout the perfume industry, although he recognises that process won’t happen overnight. ‘I believe the future of fragrance will split into two paths. The traditional path is what we know now.

‘The production processes that are in place that make 99.9 per cent of all fragrance packaging in the world are well established. If you are working with the traditional supply chain, it is nearly impossible to do something radically different. So for the foreseeable future, there will be little disruption to the typical typologies of fragrance packaging.
 
‘That said, I am confident we will see an offshoot of technologies crop up that will be really interesting. Some led by adventurous vendors, others by smaller players looking to disrupt. Such as solid perfumes (non-liquid) that open up a new world of techniques to apply fragrances and, therefore, form factors.

‘I can also see wearable vessels and what will initially enter as experimental offerings opening up access to a new markets. Over time, I believe these pioneers will be adopted by the large houses, and we will start to see some diversification to the known offering – and it will be exciting, and I look to be front and centre.’ 

Whatever the future of fragrance, we look forward to seeing what Miyake and Bracher come up with next.

INFORMATION

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Chances are, that after months in slouchy separates, you're considering splashing out on something a little smarter. The post-pandemic world calls for a return to more rigorous dressing codes, from tailored suits to smart jackets to shirting. Can't decide which tailoring style to invest in? Here, we present a selection of shapes and silhouettes, guaranteed to enhance your out-out wardrobe, from brands including Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ermenegildo Zegna and Marni.

Tailored suits: how to smarten up your act

The nylon jacket

A sure fire way to bring a relaxed ease to suiting? Opt for a style in a sports-inspired technical fabric. Case in point: Prada's suit jacket, imagined in the brand's signature nylon fabric.

The pinstripe jacket

A pinstripe blazer is the pinnacle of the 1980s Wall Street wardrobe. Add a touch of 2021 insouciance with a pattern in a wider stripe. This tailored suit speaks of power but is pleasingly laid-back too.

The asymmetric jacket

For the more avant-garde, a jacket with an aysmmetric fit ticks all your alternative buttons. Opt for a style that fastens off-centre. This will brings an eye-catching edge to your collar proportions and corresponding shirt and tie choices.

The workwear jacket

If you can't quite imagine yourself in a fitted jacket, a more workwear-centric silhouette is for you. Think boxy, oversized and with a four-button fastening and opt for stiffer utilitarian fabrics like cotton-drill or canvas.

The skinny jacket

Obsessed with the skinny silhouette that dominated early Noughties fashion? Button yourself into a narrow blazer shape and pair with an equally skinny trouser silhouette. The Noughties has never felt so now.

The white jacket

When black-tie events return to our schedules, you'll want your tailored suit to stand out. Opt for a pristine white tuxedo jacket with a luxurious satin lapel. Avoid red wine and colourful cocktails at all costs.

The oversized jacket

A slouchy, unlined jacket makes for a comfortable spring silhouette. Wear with a light underlayer, like a T-shirt or gauzy jumper, for laid-back modern ease, a look that’s enhanced when rolling up your sleeves.

The check jacket

While check or plaid jackets might feel a touch fusty, they're instantly updated with feel-good colours. Steer away from browns and greys and explore a colour palette rich in turquoises, purples and greens. 

Before the Covid-19 pandemic put a pause on travel, seasonal Fashion Weeks saw swathes of editors and crates of clothing freewheel across the globe. This mass movement was a concern for Issey Miyake’s designer Satoshi Kondo, who shipped numerous boxes of clothing from Japan to Paris for the label’s A/W20 womenswear show in February last year. Serious about streamlining, Kondo has now succeeded in packing the entire S/S21 collection into one wooden shipping box. 

Miyake’s clothing is famed for its functionality. Its lightweight Pleats Please pieces can be scrunched into suitcases and emerge crease-free, and dry after washing in a matter of minutes. For S/S21, Kondo has created silhouettes that can be folded, stacked, tied and rolled, ensuring they’ll need little space not just in a shipping box, but your chest of drawers too. The collection includes zigzag-pattern knitted garments that stretch out like a sponge, lightweight water- and-wrinkle-repellent coats that can be folded and transformed into bags, biker jackets that can be zipped up into smaller 3D forms, and vests that mould like shells around the body.

Kondo was also intent on bringing a new sense of joy to the activity of unpacking, where the construction of compact clothing brings design-focused delight. Boxed or worn, his cleverly constructed clothing is certainly a delight, and proof that good things come in small packages.

INFORMATION

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It’s the kind of image that prompts an immediate double take: against a scarlet red backdrop, Jaws, the shark, flashes its teeth next to a wide-mouthed Marilyn Monroe, alongside a scattering of Japanese characters which translate as ‘panic'.

This is one of eight dynamic works by the Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo which steal the show in a special new series of blousons which will be launched by Issey Miyake this month.

The new Tadanori Yokoo Issey Miyake project was masterminded by Issey Miyake designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae using a series of original artworks by the legendary 84-year-old artist Yokoo, some dating back as early as the 1960s.

Yokoo is no stranger to the world of Issey Miyake. A longtime friend and collaborator of Miyake, he has designed the Issey Miyake Paris Collection show invitations twice a year, since 1977 to present day, in his signature graphic style.

Marking the starting point of the new project, the eight artworks used in the blousons series are bright, bold and dynamic, with a risqué jolt of boundary-pushing in terms of the female form.

Among them is ‘Moat', a 1966 work depicting a swimmer with yellow and red flowery swimcap and unshaved armpit against a backdrop of a traditional Japanese castle; another is ‘Tarzan' is Coming, created in 1974, with the old school hero’s rugged visage centre stage in pop art-style layers of sky blue and light pink.

‘We picked artworks which we felt really give a sense of hope and look to the future,' Miyamae tells Wallpaper*. ‘We always try to make clothes that can give hope for the future, and have felt the significance of delivering such powerful clothes in this particular time.'

Explaining his choice of a genderless blouson form, he adds: ‘Yokoo san’s work is so strong that I wanted to maximise this, and I thought a blouson would be the best canvas.'

Beneath the surface lies a signature Issey Miyake mesh of craftsmanship and high-tech innovation. The collection was produced at a weaving factory near Mount Fuji, a hub for Issey Miyake’s A-POC (or A Piece of Cloth) computer system.

Left, dress, £2070. Right, jumpsuit £2205, by Issey Miyake.

Each blouson is cut from a single piece of recycled polyester fabric using advanced A-POC technology, with the artworks woven directly into the textile using precisely seven different colour threads in each design.

The soft balloon silhouette of the lightweight blouson is lined at the neckline, base and cuffs with a stretchy fabric created using Steam Stretch, another Issey Miyake innovation. ‘It’s a combination of all the technologies we’ve developed over the years,' explains Miyamae. 

The Tadanori Yokoo Issey Miyake blousons will go on sale in Tokyo’s Homme Plisse Issey Miyake / Daikanyama store from October 23, followed by stores in Osaka and Kyoto in November, before launching in Europe next spring. An exhibition focusing on the project and offering unusual insight into the A-POC making process – including A-POC textiles of the individual blouson components and blousons displayed on black 3D-printed mannequins made of a biodegradable vegetables starch – will also take place at Daikanyama T-Site Garden Gallery in Tokyo from October 23 to 25.

Miyamae adds: ‘Mr Miyake always tells me that he wants to convey a positive message to the world through his creations. I hope these create a feeling of energy and hope for the future.' 

INFORMATION

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Just days before the opening of Paris Fashion Week, new Covid-19 restrictions were implemented in France. Bars and restaurants in Marseilles were shuttered. In Paris, drinking spots were ordered to close at 10pm and gatherings of more than 10 people were banned in public places. The final city to host the S/S 2021 shows with the most sizeable schedule has been beset with travel restrictions – from the 14 day quarantine required of returning UK citizens, put in place in mid-August – to the announcement that those arriving in Italy from France are subject to a Covid-19 test. But for the City of Lights, and the epicentre of the French fashion industry, estimated at creating one million jobs and €150 billion in direct sales each year, the shows had to go on, if at least in largely ‘phygital' form.

French fashion behemoths including Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton staged live physical shows, in venues including the top floors of former department store La Samaritaine, which has been shuttered since 2005, and the rooftop of the office skyscraper Tour Montparnasse, while brands including Balenciaga, Thom Browne and new-to-the schedule Wales Bonner devised innovative collection films, featuring in Browne's case, a trio of Olympic athletes. When a week before in Milan, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada debuted their co-creative collection via a live stream, so Matthew Williams also presented his first collection for Givenchy online, teasing out his debut designs days before on Instagram.

Maria Grazia Chiuri may have presented a softer Dior silhouette for spring – inspired by enforced ease with which we are living our lives – but she didn’t go soft on the set design of the maison’s show, which was live streamed for the first time on TikTok. Inside a socially-distanced tent at the Jardin des Tuileries, Chiuri enlisted Italian visual artist and writer Lucia Marcucci, to create 7-meter high stain glass collages, that sprung up in 18 illuminated columns, inspired by the 2011 artwork ‘ Vetrata di poesia visiva’. Collage has a visual resonance with Chiuri, and she uses the art form as a tool to convey her feminist methodology. For the brand’s A/W 2018 show, she pasted the walls of the brand’s show space with provocative magazine covers and slogans, in a collection which nodded to the student protests in Paris in 1968.

If Dior is defined by the cinched in silhouette, Chiuri relaxed this rigour for spring. Models sported loose gauzy gowns, dressing gown shape jackets, easy tuxedo trousers and utilitarian cagoules. While her silhouettes were made for our at-home habits, details had an escapist élan, incorporating nomadic tie-dye, tassels, crochet and faraway florals. Designs for social-distancing, but still with a dream.

If anyone was going to respond to the practicalities of Covid-19 with technical tenacity it was Coperni. The label has its finger on the pulse of contemporary life, incorporating the digital experience into its design DNA. For S/S 2021, founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant developed ‘C+' a protective technical jersey developed using Swiss technology, which is lightweight, moisturising and anti-bacterial. This fabric – which is immersed in silver ions – was incorporated into streamlined designs, which worked to enhance the body, not restrict it, like elasticated trousers and loose buttonless shirts. The collection, shown on the roof of Paris’ tallest skyscraper, also featured wet suit leggings and technical blazers, with easy zip fastenings.  

Face masks and visors have entered the global accessory lexicon, and for his sophomore outing for Kenzo, creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista tapped into this phenomenon. Inspired by an early 20th century photograph of a man wearing a structural 3D mosquito net and cap (complete with a hole for his pipe), he created silhouettes which spoke of soft protection. Models walking outdoors at the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, wore mackintoshes and gauzy archival floral print cagoules, paired with beekeepers hats, some of which had transparent coverings protecting not only the face, but cocooning the entire body.

In 2020, the world accelerated in line with Marine Serre’s apocalyptic design vision, with proposes sustainable silhouettes for battling climate change, and environmental and social chaos. These mediate somewhere between sportswear and couture. In ‘Amor Fati', a film directed by Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiago, she presented a cinematically impressive sci-fi fantasy, with a circular narrative hooked around a laboratory, a natural landscape and an underground water-world. Serre’s cast sported balaclavas, Black Panther-centric berets and body suits, arming themselves against upheaval with recycled moire harnesses and holsters.

There’s also an apocalyptic armour behind Rick Owens’ designs. In recent seasons, the label’s creations have drawn on the garb of glam rock stars and mythological Aztec gods. For spring, Owens streamed a show from a piazza in front of Venice Lido’s casino – the spot where he spends his summers, and also the city where the term quarantine originated, when during the Black Death, infected ships arriving in the port where isolated for 40 days. An apt allusion to our times, the collection was titled ‘Phlegethon’, referring to one of the rivers in the Inferno described in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Owens equipped his hell dwellers in jackets with bulbous shoulders, fluid gowns, leather hot pants, platform thigh high boots and face masks. Uncharacteristically optimistic hues of creamy pink, banana yellow and candy apple red nodded to Neapolitan gelato. In his show notes Owens said, ‘I might just be getting into a taste for the lurid that an undercurrent of threat and dread can inspire.’ 

Pepto Bismol pink was also a colour favoured by Kiko Kostadinov’s Laura and Deanna Fanning, who for S/S 2021, evolved the label’s womenswear lexicon, experimenting with both Victorian and 1970s shapes, in bold hues and textures. Standout were hand craft-focused shirred and smocked dresses, which pucker and crinkle around the body, retro wide-collared tailoring, and an update of the brand’s curved Louis heel, embellished with colourful crystal beads and accentuated with Gladiator ankle straps.

Wales Bonner showed for the first time on the S/S 2021 schedule, but her collection – presented in ‘Thinkin Home', a sunset-drenched film by Jamaican artist Jeano Edwards – was the second in a three-collection spanning exploration of the diasporic connections between Britain and the Caribbean. While A/W 2020’s ‘Lovers Rock’ considered the British Jamaican community in the 1970s in London – inspired by Bonner’s father’s family, and photographs of teenagers hanging at Lewisham Youth Club, ‘Essence' explores the early 1980s origination of dancehall music in her grandfather's home country. Bonner looked to the style of Augustus Pablo, the Jamaican roots reggae and dub record producer and musician, and her collection sung of dancehall vibrancy and sleek British smartness, featuring stripe caftans mixed with tailoring, and fluid knitwear and bold patchwork corduroy. The collection also continued her collaboration with Adidas Originals, on slimline shell suits and colour blocked tees.

‘Psychedelic optimism’ is how Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson summed up the brand’s S/S 2021 collection, designed to celebrate the possibilities of life experienced on pause. Looking to astrological elements as optimistic symbols, the Swedish brand collaborated with the LA-based artist Ben Quinn on a series of star prints layered over organza tunics. Johansson also honed in on luminescent fabrics, finding illumination in pearlised cotton, metallic threads and iridescent paper, and celebrating fluid and diaphonous silhouettes, with handcrafted details. Akris’ Albert Kriemler also found inspiration in phosphorescence, namely the light-emitting sculptures of Imi Knoebel. He collaborated with the German Minimalist on a series of fluorescent and vibrant creations that nodded to the artist’s graphic and colour-focused oeuvre, including caftans and relaxed dresses and chic tracksuits. ‘A Knoebel line, colour or form is instantly recognisable as its own. It represents what felt very right for this moment,' Kreimler explained. ‘Something designed today should not be obsolete tomorrow.'

There have been diverse opinions regarding the return to the physical show format, and one designer content with finding alternative methods is Jonathan Anderson. For the men’s shows back in July, he devised a ‘show-in-a-box' concept for his eponymous label, and for Spanish house Loewe where he is creative director, containing interactive runway show-inspired ephemera. At Loewe, the label's S/S 2021 men’s design was imagined as a grey canvas index card box – conceived in collaboration with M/M (Paris) – packed with fabric swatches, a record, and a pop-up show set, inspired by Duchamp's ‘Boîte-en-valise', a box the artist carried in a suitcase with miniature monographs of his own work.

For S/S 2021 womenswear, Anderson broke out of the boundaries of the box, creating a ‘Show-on-the-wall', an artist's portfolio featuring S/S 2021 looks, accompanied by an interactive selection of ephemera, encouraging its receiver to immerse themselves in the collection's elements, as the viewer would at a physical runway show. Eagerly Instagrammed add-ons included a roll of wallpaper designed by Anthea Hamilton, plus a border roll depicting spring's voluminous and architectural shapes – enhanced with plumes of taffeta, ruffles of broderie anglaise, glittering knots and XL pleats – sent with Loewe monogrammed scissors, a canvas tool bag, paintbrush and glue. 

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski also placed focus on the printed form, sending out a collectors' item scrapbook to accompany Hermès’ physical show, with atmospheric images lensed by creatives including Wallpaper* collaborator Katrien De Blauwer. The maison’s accompanying collection was a masterclass in seductive minimalism. Body suits with cut-out backs were paired with knee length skirts in the supplest leather, crisp trousers styled with bandeaus, while shawl coats featured rolled up collars that unpoppered into scarves. The colour palette was rich and restrained in tones including caramel, sorbet yellow and scarlet. The most luxurious house shoe for spring? The Hermès clog, complete with an ‘H’ detail leather upper.

Paul Smith – whose beloved British brand celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – immersed himself in his personal history for spring. The designer – who swapped a physical or digital show for a lookbook and walk-through press appointments in London – was inspired by over 30 holiday photo albums, featuring snapshots of himself and wife Pauline. ‘We designed it over the phone!’ Smith laughed of the creative process behind the soothingly optimistic collection which features easy zip-up jackets in stripe tailoring fabrics, silk skirts and beach shorts emblazoned with enlarged archive rose prints, plus unconstructed tailoring. A double-breasted jacket with tactile prick stitch detailing, was inspired by the retro shapes Smith spotted on trips to Havana. ‘If people have been wearing sweats and tees all year, we ned to ease them back in,’ he said of the soft shapes.

There was also a nostalic nod behind Miu Miu's spring offering, which featured super sweet girlish silhouettes, like tracksuit tops paired with retro briefs, stripe halternecks and tennis skirts, knitted polo shirts and micro minis shimmering with plastic pailettes. It spoke of the innocent joy on dressing up and was sublime in its celebratory tone.

Designers used the downtime experienced during global lockdown to reconsider the core values of their brand. In fashion cities across the world, labels have presented pared-back or streamlined collections, with fewer looks and more focus. This concept resonated with designer Satoshi Kondo, who, troubled by the sheer number of shipment boxes used to transport Issey Miyake's last A/W 2020 offering from Tokyo to Paris, conceived a collection so compact it fitted into one. S/S 2021 features a number of shrink-inspired silhouettes that nod to the brand’s prowess in fabric development and innovation, from a technical parka and poncho which can be folded into a garment bag, to zig-zag knit patterned tops and dresses that can be rolled into a shape of a sponge. 

Y/Project’s Glenn Martens also presented a vision which evoked the ‘essential meaning’ of the experimental brand. Celebrating the versatility of its hybrid silhouettes, an accompanying ‘How to wear’ film showed how pieces could shaped, with the incorporation of zips and poppers. At Schiaparelli too, Daniel Rosenberry’s third collection for the house was focused on ‘essential silhouettes in the best fabrics’ that assimilated the hand-focused flourishes of haute couture, like trouser suits in the brand’s signature hot pink with Rorschach test-centric prints, Delphic gowns and chain-embellished shirting. These silhouettes were anything but shy, and were paired with hammered gold jewellery with nose and keylock details – surrealist symbols of the house.

While few were physically able to attend Paris for the spring shows, brands chose to celebrate the city itself. At Ami, the brand held its first show on the womenswear schedule, on the bank of the River Seine. In a more seductive spin than previous seasons, models sported dresses with cut-outs at the décolletage and check pencil skirts paired with string vests, inspired by Nineties evening wear. The urban landscape also inspired the soundtrack to Paco Rabanne’s pared-back physical show at Espace Commines, which bought a relaxed, daytime ease to the brand's disco-centric shapes. Nostalgic noises, that were silent for so much of this year, accompanied the collection, like dogs barking, police sirens honking, cars indicating and bike bells jingling.

The fashionable flaneur was also a focus. In a digital film presented as a music video, Balenciaga's S/S 2021 models stomped towards the Place Vendôme and along the Seine in the dark, miming to a synthy take on Corey Hart’s electro pop hit ‘Sunglasses at Night,’ sporting chainmail dresses and hybrid sportswear, fluffy heeled hotel slippers and wraparound shades, naturally. Rokh’s Rok Hwang was also fascinated with the concept of walking outside at night - a pastime we’ve all appreciated in recent months - recalling teenage wanders with friends when living in Austin Texas. The brand’s cinematic show film, set in an otherworldly location, featured modern flaneurs in fighting forms, including ruffled and tartan Victoriana dresses layered with leather harnesses.

For his debut at Givenchy, 1017 ALYX 9SM founder Matthew Williams teased out snippets of his S/S 2021 showcase a week before on Instagram, posting low-fi close-up images of chains and padlocks, lensed by Nick Knight. Hardware was essential to the designer’s vision, which was revealed in a surprisingly low key lookbook, with metal elements designed as a luxurious interpretation of the much-coveted logo. Williams looked at the codes of the historic couture house through a Gen Z-centric streetwear lens, featuring sleek, architectural shapes like square shouldered leather capes paired with gauzy bejewelled gowns, severe tailoring and tube dresses with seductive exposed backs. Williams nodded to previous creative directors, celebrating the tenure of Alexander McQueen with animalistic accessories, like sandals with curving horn heels and caps with knobbly antlers, and to Riccardo Tisci, in a hardware-focused revision of the graphic Antigona bag, beloved of supermodels in the Noughties. Referring to the collection as a ‘sampler’ of things to come, William’s Gen-Z fans will be fixated on what is next.

Chanel is one of many red carpet labels that has lost out to countless cancelled occasions this year, although Julia Garner and Shira Haas did opt to wear the brand to the Emmy’s first ever ‘phygital' awards show. With a typically insouciant mindset, creative director Virgine Viard was attracted to the off-duty attitude of an actress before a photocall for S/S 2021. In the show's press release she spoke of women with ‘their attitude a little out of sync with the outfits they’re wearing’ – a feeling many people have experienced this year, dressing up for visual dinner parties and on-screen events. Models walked against a huge Hollywood-inspired Chanel sign – the letters of the house erected with huge scaffolding – at a physical show inside the Grand Palais, sporting fluid asymmetric dresses, power shouldered skirt suits, sequin bermuda shorts and slogan t-shirts inspired by neon lights. The show celebrated cinematic escapism, one of which was rooted in reality.

Also intrigued by the codes of dressing today, John Galliano dissected the haute couture shapes and techniques used in Maison Margiela’s Artisanal collection, creating ethereal, finely crafted and avant-garde creations which were presented in ‘S.W.A.L.K 2', a Nick-Knight directed sequel to the brand’s video in July. The 40 minute film flits between fitting scenes in the label’s studio, and a sprawling estate in Tuscany, where Galliano’s models dance the tango, offering extensive insight into the creative process behind creating a collection.

Louis Vuitton's Nicolas Ghesquière was also fascinated by the concept of ‘in between garments' that reflect the on-pause lifestyle of today, somewhere between suiting and sportswear, at home clothes and ones for dreaming of going out. Usually showing in various areas of The Louvre, from its IM Pei-designed Cour Marly to its underground Pavillon de l’Horloge, the label decamped to the top floor of La Samaritane, the LVMH-owned department store which has been shuttered for refurbishment since 2005. In a physical and digital presentation blend, the Art Deco architecture and Art Nouveau frescoes were offset with green screen elements, which showed snippets of Wim Wenders ‘Wings of Desire' to audiences at home. Ghesquière's ‘stylistically vague' shapes featured 1980s power suiting, chainmail mini dresses and slouchy knitwear. Silhouettes appeared elegantly thrown on, like boardshorts paired with a long duster coat and a ‘Peace’ slogan tee. The show summed up a season that navigated the online and physical realms, creating clothing which caters to today's much changed lifestyle, one which shows no sign of settling come spring.

A hazy tie-dye pattern resembling a sun-scorched desert, schoolgirl-centric checks in grayscale tones, lush assemblages of tropical fronds…prints define the sartorial sway of the fashion season. So much so, that for our March 2020 Style Special issue (W*252), we took a magnifying lens to the most magnificent womenswear motifs of S/S 2020, enlisting Paris-based set stylist Marie-Noëlle Perriau to fold our favoured fabrics into origami-centric shapes, photographed by Patricia Schwoerer.

It’s not the first time we’ve enlisted Schwoerer, who has shot advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake, Prada and Dior. She also lensed the overhauled interiors of Celine’s rue de Grenelle boutique in Paris, for our June 2019 issue (W*243).

Perriau has collaborated with brands including Delvaux, Bulgari, Prada and Comme des Garçons and defines her set styling approach as an ‘effortless intervention,’ composed of ‘natural gestures’. It’s a sublime approach for letting prints including MSGM’s romantic rose motifs, Chanel’s panoramic sketch of Paris’ rooftops and Celine’s vintage upholstery prints shine. For our pattern-focused special, Perriau worked to ‘find the right balance’ between Schwoerer’s striking close up photography and Marianne Kakko – Wallpaper’s Assistant Market Editor’s – styling motifs. ‘You had to navigate between these two elements,’ she adds.

For 2020, Perriau is working on a wide range of brand-focused and personal projects. Of particular importance is an experimental art installation titled ‘cellule d’expérimentation esthétique’, installed in healthcare facilities, which will engage one visitor at a time inside a small room, and explore their interaction with plastic forms. Just like the magnifying lens we took to S/S 2020’s standout prints, we’ll be sure to zoom in Perriau’s next project too.

INFORMATION

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