Issey Miyake Played With Volumes and Colors for Spring 2027

Issey Miyake Spring 2027: The Space in Between

This was a joyful, voluminous collection with a luscious play of colors.

Issey Miyake Spring/Summer 2027: Figure of Ma photos by Fillippo Fior for GoRunway

Dear Shaded Viewers, Some shows you watch. Others you breathe. On Friday, October 2, at the Dojo de Paris, Issey Miyake gave us the second kind, and I left feeling lighter than when I arrived. Figure of Ma started with something wonderfully simple: the joy of playing with one large piece of fabric. Before there is a “garment,” before there is a seam or a silhouette, there is cloth meeting body. Satoshi Kondo and his team went back to that first encounter to look for ma, the Japanese idea of the space in between. They found it in the air that moves between fabric and skin, the pause that lets a form breathe. The room was black, and the floor shone like still water. A dancer opened the show wrapped in beige pleats. Then a huge undulating textile crossed the space like a passing cloud. Tess Voelker choreographed and staged the show and danced the lead, with ten performers who filled the cloth with air, bent it and let it go. Koki Nakano played a Steinway live. He didn’t just accompany the clothes. He helped develop the concept, so sound and fabric grew up together. Every note seemed to have a matching fold. Then the clothes came out, and Kondo showed how far the house’s research culture can go. The real headline is Cocoon Body, made with the Japanese lingerie company Wacoal. Wacoal has a technology called Melooop, first developed to mould bra cups. Here a torso mould is mounted on a robotic arm and sprayed with melted resin, a little like a silkworm spinning its cocoon. Before that, damp fabric was draped on mannequins by hand and 3D-scanned, so the finished form keeps the memory of a real hand at work. The result is a sculpted bodice that is almost unsettling, a second skin you could mistake for the torso itself. It came in electric violet over fluid black trousers, in plaster-pale ecru with a sharp little shirt collar, and in a sheer black mesh. The resin is 60% plant-based, and offcuts go back into production, so there is zero waste. It was the most daring idea of the season, and it was handled with total grace. Around it the house’s signature techniques came alive. Fluiglyph is a seamless knit that ripples like moving water. A violet top slid off one shoulder over a powder-blue column, with random garter stitches in different widths and yarns. Balloon Twist was crinkled and luminous. Each piece is hand-twisted around ball-shaped moulds, giving a black blouse with rounded shoulders, a mercury-silver skirt and a white ensemble that looked like a cloud that had decided to walk. Draped Ensemble wraps the body in one piece of firm, light fabric woven with washi, the traditional Japanese paper. The fabric twists and gathers into sculpture, and scarves can be threaded through the folds. The colour was pure joy. Caprice builds each piece from three rectangles of solid colour, partly sewn together, so the pleats layer and sway: turquoise over celadon and butter, and a monumental hooded wrap in ecru, black and turquoise. Tempo Pleats made a saffron-yellow hooded silhouette whose horizontal pleats bounced at every step, as if the garment were playing too. Billow offered huge single-piece coats in sheer blush pink and pale gold, so light they seemed to swell with each breath. Bubble carried marbled prints in black and violet, hand-painted in Kyoto by artisans who drip pigment onto water. Pleated paper-white headpieces, soft leather bags and new footwear made with Camper completed the picture. The shoes were comfortable, grounded and made for moving. Holding the show in a dojo, a place built for discipline, breath and the body in motion, was perfect. Reviewers across Paris noticed the same thing I did: these clothes never settle into one final form. They change with the wearer, and that is the whole point. Figure of Ma is clothing that keeps transforming with whoever wears it. It’s poetic without being precious, high-tech without losing its tenderness, and conceptual without losing its joy. In a season of noise, Issey Miyake chose air. I’m grateful. Credits Collection design: Satoshi Kondo | Concept development and original music: Koki Nakano (piano by Steinway & Sons) | Choreography and staging: Tess Voelker | Performers: Tess Voelker (lead), Jade Albrieux, Noah am Ende, Félix Bossard, Alvin Collantes, Anna Freedman, Victoria Graßmugg, Amanda Lana, Matteo Manzoni, Reika Shirasaka, Yasin Sönmez | Styling: Shotaro Yamaguchi | Casting: Finlay MacAulay | Hair: Anthony Turner using Dyson Beauty | Makeup: Anthony Preel | Production: Back of the House Later, Diane

Issey Miyake Played With Volumes and Colors for Spring 2027

For spring 2027, Satoshi Kondo reinvented what a modern wardrobe could look like, playing on volumes and sumptuous colors. He and his team titled the collection “Figure of Ma.” “Ma is this Japanese idea of the space in between,” Kondo explained. “We are further exploring again the concept of ma. I’ve always been interested in […]