Gorgeous book charts Issey Miyake's revolutionary Pleats Please collection

Date
8 October 2012

Few clothing collections can claim to be truly revolutionary (although many press releases will have a go) but Issey Miyake’s 1993 Pleats Please can justly be designated as such.Cut and sewn from fabric that is nearly three times bigger than the final pieces, the garments are fed into a pleats machine to combine texture and form in a beautiful way.

Whether it’s shirts, skirts, trousers or cardigans, the collection was a triumph of style and wearability, rendered in bright bold colours that added another dimension.

A new book published by Taschen tells the story of this extraordinary development in fashion technology with beautiful shots of the finished pieces across the various iterations displayed alongside lovely behind-the-scenes production images. It’s written by  Midori Kitamura, a former employee of the designer who is thus perfectly-placed to give an interesting and insightful account of the Pleats Please range but as so often with Taschen this book’s appeal resides predominantly in the gorgeous visuals.

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Midori Kitamura: Pleats Please Issey Miyake (cover)

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Issey Miyake: pleats Please (Pic by Yasuaki Yoshinaga)

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Pleats Please sandwiched between two sheets of paper to be pleated (Picture by Kazumi Kurigami)

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Issey Miyake: Pleats Please (Picture by Francis Giacobetti)

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Issey Miyake: Pleats Please (Picture by Francis Giacobetti)

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Midori Kitamura: Pleats Please Issey Miyake (spread)

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Issey Miyake: Pleats Please in China (Picture by Yuriko Takagi)

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Image on the theme of travelling with PLEATS PLEASE, from the magazine Axis vol. 52, 1994 (Picture by Photo: Tetsuo Yuasa)

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PLEATS PLEASE from the exuberant finale of the ISSEY MIYAKE Spring/Summer 1994 collection show in Paris (Picture by Philippe Brazil)

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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