Ambiguity Is the New Aesthetic
Review of Issey Miyake Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Abstract, In Motion, Transformational
A collaboration with contemporary artist Erwin Wurm opened the show with a performative work of his series titled ‘One Minute Sculptures’. The artists work chimes with the Issey Miyake ethos in the sense that he rethought the concept of sculpture and similary the Miyake brand has long rethought the concept of the garment. Case in point, todays runway gave us the ‘Garment Bag’, not the bag often used to ensure the crease-free arrival of our tailoring on a business trip, but a shopping bag rendered in fabric remade into an actual garment!
‘Abstract, Concrete, and In-between’ the show title and notes talk of ambiguity as a new aesthetic readying itself to emerge, as for so long clothes have been made to perform a set role, but through fabric and pattern-making innovation the brand has always proven that there is so much more to ‘A Piece of Cloth’. Challenging “…the viewer’s preconception of what is ordinary” garments that often live in our wardrobes for years – only seen as purely functional – were freed from their familiarity. Sweatshirts were crafted in open-weave knits and blown-up to outsized proportions, knitwear was sliced into and knotted around the body to be reformed in a new guise with every wear, and shirts were skewed and worn asymmetrically with the sleeves left loose, while horizontal pockets meant that hands could be affixed in an act of self-imposed confinement or restraint.
Suggesting that this could be a transitional phase or according to today’s notes “manifestations of a new aesthetic” (unsettling though they may at first seem), many designers have also been presenting back-to-front and upside down ideas this season while making them aesthetically pleasing. As it appears that maybe we are now ready for the idea of disruption and can imagine wearing a shopping bag unironically, or it could simply be a subtle jab at our society’s over-consumption problem that is reaching breaking point.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Fall 2025, for both the mens and women’s Issey Miyake collections, have been immersive experiences (of both performances and exhibitions – ‘Fly with IM Men’ opened at the Réfectoire Des Cordeliers during the men’s season) which question the nature of clothing as objects and how we relate to them, while clothing as wearable art may no longer feel like such a foreign concept after it was presented today as a possible incoming future aesthetic.
