Homme Plissé Issey Miyake Takes Us Up,Up, and Away
Review of Homme Plisse Issey Miyake Spring 2025 Men’s Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
THE THEME
The Issey Miyake ethos has always been one that promotes freedom of movement. Never more so than with the innovative pleating technique developed for the original Pleats Please line launched in 1993. The runway shows for the brand have also – more often than not – featured some sort of performance, whether from professional dancers or the models themselves taking off running around the shows set. The inclusion of minimal fastenings coupled with the garments ability to stretch and recover in every direction affords it, its multi-generational appeal, which has transcended its beginnings as a need to be as simple and wearable an option as the ubiquitous jeans and t-shirt.
Today’s iteration of freedom-focussed clothing was about them taking flight and becoming airborne. This didn’t mean the each look was fitted with some form of propeller or jet pack, but what it meant was a childlike or domestic influence had come into the minds of the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team as the weightless materials from which they had created many of the outerwear looks for spring 2025 billowed after each model as if on a washing line, or attached to a child’s head as it mimicked wings as they themselves hoped to take off.
For spring 2025, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake want to take us “Up, Up, and Away”, inspired by the element of wind – which notably symbolises change, freedom, renewal, and travel. The designs in today’s collection encapsulated these traits as the use of “sheer, light-weight textiles [and] voluminous silhouettes, and a sense of ease in wearing” according to todays notes, were to come together to bring each garment to life as soon as the air around it was in motion.
Pushing the potential of the brands signature ‘pleating technology’, the idea that it can be considered ‘wind-borne’ when it has been famously known for its corrugated structure is what formed new areas of discovery within the collection. Taking the names of objects we often see in the air as a starting point, and translating them into everyday wardrobe staples, saw the design of a kite helping outerwear to at once appear sculptural, yet when worn to float on a breeze, achieved through the clever use of curved seams it could also be packed down (into a pocket) like a kite. And parachutes whose harnesses were embedded into the structure of a number of garments, so their straps could allow them to be worn layered or simply to provide a moment of relief when the temperature rises, there was also the inclusion of a concealed belt for ease of storage. A new coat style called the MC January also came as a fully adaptable silhouette with multiple arm-openings so the sleeves leave hands free and bounce in the wind.
The colours within the collection were kept light and breezy in keeping with the ‘Up, Up, and Away theme’ but a series of looks in a distorted check pattern was referred to as a “windswept plaid”, so instead of being neatly formed in vertical and horizontal gridlines, these patterns were the result of spontaneity.
THE BUZZWORDS
Air in motion, adaptable outerwear, freshen up
THE SHOWSTOPPER
Look #34
Taking inspiration from the harnesses of a parachute, this outerwear look was designed so that air could flow through it once worn on the body, and in doing so it also encapsulates the need for adaptability within the everyday.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
The Issey Miyake pleated collection is well-loved for its universal appeal, one which doesn’t rely on fitting the ideals around the perfect body shape and allows the wearer to have fun whilst in them. Adding another layer of lightness and covert utility is only likely to increase the brands fandom. And far from resting on said fans love for the brand, under the creative direction of the design team we have seen a continued push for innovation and multi-purpose end-use, which has kept it from losing momentum in this new era since the founders passing. Energy and ease are what came together for spring 2025 reshaping how the brands 30-year-old technology can be applied and updated today.
