Best streamlining: Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021

Before the Covid-19 pandemic put a pause on travel, seasonal Fashion Weeks saw swathes of editors and crates of clothing freewheel across the globe. This mass movement was a concern for Issey Miyake’s designer Satoshi Kondo, who shipped numerous boxes of clothing from Japan to Paris for the label’s A/W20 womenswear show in February last year. Serious about streamlining, Kondo has now succeeded in packing the entire S/S21 collection into one wooden shipping box. 

Miyake’s clothing is famed for its functionality. Its lightweight Pleats Please pieces can be scrunched into suitcases and emerge crease-free, and dry after washing in a matter of minutes. For S/S21, Kondo has created silhouettes that can be folded, stacked, tied and rolled, ensuring they’ll need little space not just in a shipping box, but your chest of drawers too. The collection includes zigzag-pattern knitted garments that stretch out like a sponge, lightweight water- and-wrinkle-repellent coats that can be folded and transformed into bags, biker jackets that can be zipped up into smaller 3D forms, and vests that mould like shells around the body.

Kondo was also intent on bringing a new sense of joy to the activity of unpacking, where the construction of compact clothing brings design-focused delight. Boxed or worn, his cleverly constructed clothing is certainly a delight, and proof that good things come in small packages.

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