Homme Plissé Issey Miyake celebrates 10 years with photo series exploring the story behind the pleats

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