Pleats Please Issey Miyake

Issey Miyake is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese designers, alongside the likes of Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons), Yohji Yamamoto and the late Kenzo Takada. After graduating from Tama Art University in Tokyo with a degree in graphic design in 1964, Miyake worked in Paris and New York for a few years, before returning to Tokyo in 1970. He immediately started his own studio and began his journey into women's fashion.

In the 1980's, one of his colleagues came to him with the idea of pleating—folding and pressing—finished garments. Throughout the coming years he would start perfecting this new technique, which he introduced in the Issey Miyake 1989 mainline collection.

In an interview with Pin-Up Magazine Miyake said:

"Clothing has a relationship to the body and, via the body, to the mind. They are inseparable. The space created between the clothes and the body is what interests me and communicates the most.”

What seemed like a radical idea at first, quickly turned into a new design ethos for Miyake, resulting in the clothing line Pleats Please. This new way of working with shapes and fabrics resulted in a collection of clothes that are a product in themselves - made with the unique “garment pleating” technique where materials were developed from scratch, sewn into a boxy shape and then pleated to fit, or more accurately, float on the body. These garments are uniquely functional and versatile; extremely light weight, wrinkle proof, compact, comfortable and stylish all at once. The incredible, pleated garments speak to the body and mind with a loosely floating, extraordinarily comforting and style-inspiring, voice of reason. Pleats Please by Issey Miyake represents a modern and sophisticated wardrobe of the future, that is accessible today.