The great outdoors and climate may have been the starting points for Issey Miyake's collection and the themes were convincingly developed through parkas, jackets and trousers in technological fabrics. These themes are quite fashionable at the moment: climate is changing and the main preoccupation of quite a few designers has recently been creating lighter yet warmer garments that can guarantee dynamism, comfort and efficiency.
In Miyake's case, though, two words were the keys to unlock the collection – tradition and innovation. Sakori, that is the Japanese art of creating new cloth from old cloth (weaving with thin strips of worn fabric) was employed in the opening looks; other designs were instead a mix of samurai-style quilted garments made employing the Japanese hand needlework technique called Sashiko that uses the basic running stitch to create a patterned background.
The quilted garments in Myake's collection can also be folded and rolled up as picnic blankets – another reference to nature and the great outdoors and the focus of Miyake's studies about fabrics (as proved also by the 132 5. project that relied on science and mathematics).
Yet there was also something else: the collection featured garments made with the metallic ultra-thin fabric of emergency blankets. The fabric was incorporated into parkas, coats and pants for a well-defined futuristic look.
The gold and silver foil evoked space uniforms while suggesting new ways to keep warm, but the collection also seemed to indirectly reference the palette – reds, blues and purples – and the futuristically dystopic moods of Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk film Akira.
Though you could easily imagine the characters populating Neo-Tokyo in 2019 and in particular Shotaro Kaneda and the Capsules, his bōsōzoku gang, clad in these garments as they race on their motorbikes, the shades of the designs constantly called to mind the multiple blasts and horrifying explosions, the blinding balls of light or apocalyptic visions of the sun rising over the destroyed city or the purple halos surrounding the espers and their paranormal powers.
Though the utility wear included in the collection was about the popular and currently covetable high-tech aesthetic and this should satisfy the buyers, maybe there are other reasons to be happy: we may have finally found the post-atomic costumes needed for the long-expected live action remake of Akira.
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Issey Miyake’s collection and the themes are quite fashionable…its very much different and unique! One thing I just want to say is that your blog is so perfect!