Paper Trail
Review of Issey Miyake Spring 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Lightness. Innovation. Ease. Organic elegance.
For Spring 2025, creative director Satoshi Kondo and his design team at Issey Miyake dive into the material of paper: its natural origins, its cultural and craft significance in Japan as washi, and the beauty of is simple yet transformative nature.
This point of inspiration shaped both the innovative material palette that is the foundation of the collection as well as the final silhouettes. As washi isn’t functional enough on its own to make a garment that is wearable for everyday use, the team cut the paper into fine strips that were used like yarn, and woven with other fibers like hemp, rayon, mohair, wool, and cotton to create new textiles: sometimes airy and fluid, sometimes strong and supple.
Key moments reference the process of creating paper and its applications for various art forms. Inspired by water, the stunning and ethereal first pair of looks used a slickly shimmering white textile that was gathered with an internal structure to create the sense of continuous flow over the wearer’s body, including theatrically shrouding their face. Other looks featured crinkling, wrapping, twisting, and folding. Three-dimensional applications of the brand’s signature pleating innovations drew inspiration from origami, and created a sculptural sense of lightness and space through the folding of sheer layers.
While Issey Miyake isn’t a brand to play into trends, there were a couple moments that felt like Kondo put his own spin on the playful deconstructionist category of messed-up garments (for lack of a better word) – shirts with two neck holes or extra sleeves, garments that reference and subvert their own status as a piece of clothing. It was an interesting detour, yet it made sense in a collection that, as with many from Miyake and Kondo, was deeply adherent to the concept of ma, the space between two things – in this case, between the body and the layers of clothing around it.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
My team and I stayed at a hotel in Hiroshima called LOG, and everything in the rooms was covered with washi paper. Having stayed just one night we felt this experience of being soothed and put at ease by being in this environment of washi. That formed the starting point of the collection’s really thorough investigation of not just washi paper but paper as a material.”
THE WRAP UP
Satoshi Kondo and his team continue to do beautiful work building on the legacy of the master Issey Miyake, guiding forward with deftness and imagination his vision of clothing that is timeless yet innovative, beautiful yet comfortable. Just as in the art of origami, Issey Miyake has transformed a simple piece of paper through single, decisive, imaginative steps into something complex, pure, and beautiful.
