Fashion for everyone

Last month, I had the pleasure of stopping by the Issey Miyake store with Brandon for the launch of the 132 5 collection. I was in an unfortunate rush to get to my own party, so I didn't have time take photographs, but Brandon, being the Issey obsessive that he is (I've seen him stop women wearing Issey on the street to thank them for supporting the designer), was kind enough to email over the press images and photographs.

As one would expect, the collection is so high-concept it almost makes your head spin. When laid out flat in the store, the pieces look like gorgeous folded fabric origami ornaments, and are completely unrecognizable as garments. At the store, I made the mistake of picking up this perfectly shaped creation, only to have it to magically spiral out into a full fledged 3-D geometric garment that I could no longer restore to compact 2-D form, inspite of my desperate attempts, and my natural talent for origami. The garment, which looks somewhat like a buckyball rendered in fabric, is quite glorious on the figure, and it seem like quite a remarkable transformation from the flat shape.

Issey and company explain it far better than I ever could: "132 5 begins with 1 piece of cloth manipulated through 3-dimensional molding that can be returned to a 2-dimensional plane, and creates a 5th dimension when the garment is worn and comes to life." If that sounds a bit scientific to you, that's because the 3-D shapes are conceived in collaboration with computer scientists. I might not be able to understand or appreciate the math or science behind the construction of such of futuristic garment, but I think we all can appreciate the breathtaking final results.