Circles appear in architecture a lot, from designs in which circular openings create dramatically striking geometrical views over an internal part of the building like Louis Kahn's Phillips Exeter Academy Library or carve out openings similar to portals into another dimension as it happens in Carlo Scarpa's Brion cemetery chapel or add some dynamism to a modular space like the centrally placed circular windows in the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurokawa.
Satoshi Kondo at Issey Miyake has been exploring the possibilities of the circle for a few collections. In the S/S 22 collection, launched with a film during Paris Fashion Week (currently in a post-pandemic format divided between physical and digital presentations), circles inspired some of the best designs in the collection.
The film, by the award-winning Japanese video director Yuichi Kodama, entitled "A Voyage to Descent" is a sort of trip under the sea: models in fluid, dynamic and lightweight garments in glistening materials, evoke aquatic themes as they go down a ladder similar to the ones you may find in swimming pools, yet they do not enter the water, but a concrete space.
As the film continues, we discover liquid dresses inspired by organic shapes, but made with artisanal techniques, from the hikizome, a hand-dyeing technique, to the printing technique known as naki (bleed).
The former, done by craftspeople in Kyoto, consists in drawing patterns onto damp fabric with brushes and paint sprayers and was employed to create blurred patterns onto skirts and tops, a one-shoulder dress and wide trousers.
The latter was used to create floral motifs or half-intersecting circles, patterns inspired by waves and creatures from the deep sea, on a halter neck dress and a trouser suit characterized by relaxed lines and calling to mind pajamas. Naki allows the colors to seep in and blur into each other to faithfully represent the subtlety in the details created by the mix of four colors.
The scene then moves to a dark room with models picking from the floor circular flat fabrics that turn into three-dimensional creations once they put them on.
These garments are part of the "Link Rings" series: made of eight connected sections of circular-pleated fabric, these three-dimensional creations formed by intersecting circles vaguely call to mind the circle patterns in Gothic architecture, resembling at the same time the aerial view of the maze-like Vara pavilion (made with overlapping cylinders View this photo) designed by Chilean architects Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, a reduction of their conceptual "Infinite Motive" project, a megastructure of 100 overlapping circular enclosures.
Once folded along the pleats the interconnected round pieces of fabrics look like concentric ripples in a calm pool of water. Issey Miyake has successfully developed such exercises in compactable clothes in different collections, but this is a concept that Nanni Strada had started developing in the early '70s with foldable clothes based on origamis.
Among the other highlights of this collection there are seamless knits and dresses made with recycled polyester yarn that form ridged circles of fabric with minimal seaming.
Knitted in an arcing spiral shape, these garments (among them also a a top that can be worn both forwards and backwards) are inspired by the ocean's organic forms: imagine the neverita josephinia' spiral and ruffled egg casings known as "sand collar" and you get an idea.
Sea creatures also inspired the sea anemone-like hats that accessorised the final looks and their vividly bright palette.
The "descent" in the film title was a metaphor for the creative process hinting at the fact creativity is a persistent endeavor, one in which you must continuously and constantly dig and research to finally discover something never created before. In the case of this collection the descent was a full immersion into fabric research and advanced knitwear construction, something that not many houses and labels do nowadays.
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