Don’t get it twisted

It is easy to understate just how revolutionary Issey Miyake was in his heyday. Ripping up the rulebook on how clothes should fit and function, Miyake’s adaptive clothes allowed for easy movement and a more flattering silhouette than the sometimes-unforgiving strictures of other designers. He also posited polyester as a fabric to rival the finest merino, an ambition that is easy to dismiss in the present day when cheaply-made plastic clothes fill charity shops and landfill sites the world over. These were clothes no one was going to get rid of. His death in 2022 came with the realisation we had lost a great master and disrupter. 

Yet the brand goes on and has come back, we would argue, into the fashion consciousness to a new audience. Just in time for the holidays, the brand has just launched a new colour way of their Chiffon Twist line for their AW24 women’s collection. With a visual campaign realised by Teruhiro Yanagihara Studio, the Chiffon Twist tops echo the colours and textures of the natural world – contemplative ochre the hue of sandstone, or a hot magenta that brings to mind the blush of coral reefs. It’s Issey Miyake with a twist, if you will, echoing the organic form of the body itself. 

There is a grand tradition in Japanese design of letting nature do the work. In 2010, scientists applied slime mould on a model of the Tokyo subway, and found that the organic pathways mapped by the mould created a more efficient system. It is in this tradition that Chiffon Twist operates, beauty evinced from coincidence, underwritten by pragmatism. Ideal for layering under a warm woollen coat, you can shop Chiffon Twist below.