Presented with a fashion film directed by film maker Mikiya Takimoto, as part of the ongoing digital Paris Fashion Week, the Issey Miyake Fall/Winter 2021 collection, titled “As the Way It Comes to Be”, offered a discourse on the shapes and colors of nature, its stones and landscapes, which translates into a series of clothes in neutral tones primarily in natural tones such as brown, orange, gray and blue, referencing egg or stones’ hues, shell- and wave-like patterns, as well as the desert at sunrise.
“I wanted to integrate elements from nature as they are, and as we find them”, Satoshi Kondo said before adding that he wanted to amplify these elements “through the technology, the idea, and the ingenuity” that has long been fostered within the house.
The garments were understated, yet packed a punch with innovative fabrics and silhouettes. Key pieces included dresses in squares of fabric whose monolith simplicity bent to the body via panels of elastic threading on the torso. Beautiful prints reminiscent of river-eroded stones were created through a 1,500-year-old dye-dropping technique called suminagashi that originated in Fukui Prefecture. These were then used in a tight collection of smoothly silhouetted garments. The pleated work, a classic Issey Miyake technique, appeared both in the microtextures of the collection’s dresses, modeled with square cuts of fabric, and in the beautiful folding work that created build circular movements within the well-constructed silhouettes.
