In the middle of the Paris Fashion Week for the next Autumn/Winter, it should be reported an other very important acknowledgement to the designer who most was able to connect clothing to concepts as innovation, experimentation and research. On Saturday 5^th March, at Issey Miyake boutique of Rue Royale in Paris, it will be launched an unpublished monograph dedicated by the Taschen publishing house to the Japanese master and to his prolific and hyper-technologic  Design Miyake Studio, established in the 1970.

A book that, not by chance, is launched almost simultaneously with the exhibition that will be opened on the 16^th of March at the National Art Center of Tokyo, completely installed to celebrate the professional history and the cultural contributions introduced by the researches carried out during these years by the researchers team involved in Issey Miyake’s ambitious creative project.

A long, extensive tale of the different steps that have characterised of the well-known polyester pleating, today present in the most prestigious shops in the world with the bran new version called “Baked Stretch”.

The chromatic and formal possibilities opened by this innovative material manufacturing, so called ‘baked’ as the pleats take their aspects after a heath exposition process very similar to the one of the bread rising, reveal the maturity and the extreme autonomy gained by the excellent collaborators chosen by Issey Miyake, among them it’s not possible to not mention the Maison creative director, the young Yoshiyuki Miyamae.

Click here to watch the video.

For those who would not have the chance to participate to the Paris event, nor to go directly to Tokyo, they can anyway lost themselves in the different pages describing the vast and futuristic repertoire of the Japanese designer. In fact the book is already available on the Taschen website and in the next months it would be distributed by the libraries and by the authorized boutiques.

Reversible top and skirt .

Reversible dress.

After the recent volume by Taschen on the Pleats Please by Issey Miyake, the most important European publishing house specialised in art, architecture and design is about to publish two monographs on the work of another two excellent names of the so-called Japanese school: Rei Kawakubo-Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. In December, publication is planned of:

-The art of anti-fashion. Yohji Yamamoto: The fashion designer who redesigned fashion

and

-Conceptual clothing. The history and the art of Kawakubo’s brand

Two different surveys, including images and interviews with photographers, artists, intellectuals and experts, on the professional and artistic philosophy of the two designers who, in different ways, have destabilised traditional western fashion codes. Rei Kawakubo, more conceptual than subversive,

Yohji Yamamoto, more abstract and rigorous,

both supporting clothing with a high artistic value, cultured and complex, often difficult to assimilate and understand.

While awaiting these precious pieces to be added to our fashion and design library, we would like to share with you a wonderful documentary on the last exhibition at the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris, dedicated to the White Drama collection (spring/summer 2012) of Comme des Garçons…

Perhaps it is these more far reaching experiences and the need to intercept prepared, independent interlocutors, as well as measuring oneself on more talented ground, that explain the recent accusation made by Rei Kawakubo against the media…

I think the media has some responsibility to bear for people becoming more conservative. Many parts of the media have created the situation where uninteresting fashion can thrive… (Rei Kawakubo, 19/11/2012, Women’s Wear Daily)

Thanks for the images to: Taschen and Grandma Stole My Closet

It is with great pleasure that we present the first publication of the publishing house Taschen dedicated entirely to Pleats Please, the most famous line of pleats by Issey Miyake.

The book, edited by Midori Kitamura, president of the Miyake Design Studio of Tokyo, is more than 500 pages long, including text and illustrations, and recounts the story of the famous Japanese graphic designer and his work leading up to the creation of an absolutely revolutionary brand in 1993.

Every single Pleats Please garment and accessory is in fact made from a single piece of high quality polyester that is sewn and assembled and only then pressed using highly advanced machinery, which belong exclusively to the Maison workshops.

This process renders the fabric of the finished product at least three times smaller than its original size. The technology used, in addition to ensuring a vertical pleating that remains intact over time, and producing an item that can go in the washing machine and never has to be ironed, also makes truly spectacular architectural effects possible, enhanced by bright colours and patterns. The lightness of the polyester and the elasticity of the fold provide additional and exceptional functional and practical quality, allowing greater freedom of individual movement and making the garments easy to take along when traveling.

The book is extremely thorough and allows us not only to delve into the mysterious and complex processes that lie behind Pleats Please dresses, skirts, trousers, jackets and accessories, but also to remain spellbound by the genius of their creator.

And, if reading the book gives you an uncontrollable urge to wear Pleats Please, here is an almost unobtainable assortment.