MILAN — Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s garments are meant for everyday living.
The design team’s creative process is intended to be purpose-driven, aimed at conceiving universal, quotidian pieces of clothing that break boundaries of occasion of use and context and are just feel-good, Linus’ blanket-like essentials.
The concept lies at the foundation of the brand’s ethos, rooted in adaptability and versatility, qualities that are inherent to the crafting technique that goes into the creation of the all-pleated wardrobe it offers.
After cementing its reputation and gaining a cult following, the Japanese brand is ready to take a deeper dive into its daily-use concept and seek even more resonance globally, by engaging in dialogue with new places and the local communities the brand visits.
Showing its spring 2026 collection at Pitti Uomo as this season’s guest of honor of the menswear trade fair, the brand inaugurates the roving presentation schedule announced earlier this year. New collections are to be unveiled in different locations and through a diverse range of formats, not just runway shows.
“Homme Plissé Issey Miyake is designed and made for everyday living, taking into consideration a variety of scenes of modern lifestyles. Under this concept, as the brand continues to evolve, and as we continue our research and development of clothes-making, we had this idea of exploring around the world to learn about different cultures to broaden our perspectives,” the secretive design team behind the brand told WWD in an email exchange.
“We believe that the knowledge and experiences gained during our travels will be the foundation on which we further build our design and making. By practicing our craft in different cultural contexts, we aim to develop a wider range of clothing that is diverse, yet still universal,” they said.
A preview of the Issey Miyake spring 2026 collection.
Fabrizio Martinelli/WWD
In a follow-up interview in Milan last week, a member of the team further elaborated on the concept of everyday living through an interpreter.
“There are so many occasions, so many different contexts. We’re not trying to specify [what is suitable for one occasion]. The intention is to design clothing for a person to live [in] throughout their everyday life,” he said.
This may be one of the reasons Homme Plissé Issey Miyake has become over the years a favorite among fashion professionals and fashionistas alike, since it was established in 2013 as the menswear counterpart to Pleats Please, the womenswear, pleat-centric brand introduced in 1994.
Asked about its success, a design team member referenced the brand’s unique perspective, both in craft and concept.
“What we do is quite unique — you don’t find it anywhere else,” he said. “And also, because the intention, or the brand concept, is to design something for the everyday lifestyle, you can wear this for many occasions. That kind of versatility and adaptability [works well] for the modern lifestyle. People are always on go, and they can just grab this and put it in the suitcase. So, I think there’s also a sense of clothing being practical,” he said.
Prepping the spring collection, the design team traveled to Florence and toured Italy, aiming to connect with the local culture. They also visited the Cinque Terre seaside destination — a group of five, picture-perfect villages along the Ligurian coastline, known for their houses decked in sorbet shades standing above turquoise coves — and found that particularly inspiring.
The team even compiled a book of pictures taken on that trip, which could easily be published as a photographic essay on the secluded, off-track destinations scattered throughout Italy.
At the same time, it poetically documents the creative process, and how for example a certain pale pink shade in the collection, as well as mauve and buttery yellow, were drawn from paint seen on the buildings.
“We don’t pick colors from, like, landmark architecture. Everything comes from what you see [around] your everyday scene,” a design team member offered.
In order to reproduce the exact shade, the team brought along a portable color palette with brush and paints which they mixed on-site until the result was achieved.
“There are many beautiful cities and landscapes [in Italy]. This collection is built upon colors found in the urban fabric and nature of Italian cities,” another design team member concurred.
The clothes standing on racks as WWD previewed the collection spanned a rainbow-wide range of colors, evoking the landscape of Manarola, one of the Cinque Terre villages.
Homme Plissé’s vocabulary of garments is to be further explored in the spring 2026 collection, built upon the brand’s signature deconstructed look, apt for layering and countless styling options.
Showing at menswear mecca Pitti Uuomo also fueled a step-up approach, with a study on modern tailoring that led the team to add more options to the lineup of currently available in Homme Plissé pieces. These included, for example, elongated blazers to be worn with sartorial-nodding shorts, and regular pleated suits with more structured shoulders layered upon pleated shirts with stand-up paneled collars.
For its Wednesday afternoon show in Florence, the brand picked the Villa Medicea della Petraia venue, a 14th-century hillside estate overlooking the city of Florence featuring lush gardens that once belonged to the Medici family.
Beyond its early-Renaissance beauty, the location inspired the team to envision a two-pronged format for the presentation.
A preview of the Issey Miyake spring 2026 collection.
Fabrizio Martinelli/WWD
In addition to a traditional runway show held in the gardens, Homme Plissé is mounting an exhibition inside its rooms, aimed at spreading knowledge on the signature pleating technique to a new audience by spotlighting the research and development poured into it.
The team explained that the exhibit will display both documentations and objects currently used in manufacturing and R&D, as well as more abstract items, intended to explore “the future of the pleated garments,” one design team member said. “That’s [going to be] really abstract, what we call maybe a sculpture made [of pleated fabric],” he said.
Pleats in the Homme Plissé and Pleats Please collections differ from one another and are achieved through two different dedicated machineries, both applying the pleats to the flat, final garment, thus reducing textile waste, as well as the need for seams.
Although the next stop in the brand’s roving show format is still to be determined, the design team said each presentation is going to be unique and related to its context, location and audience.
“The plan to travel around the world seems natural to us, as we can further develop our craft and introduce our clothing and the ideas behind them to many more people. For the next location, we have several ideas that we are trying to develop,” the team said in the email exchange.
Before Homme Plissé and Pleats Please, Issey Miyake introduced pleats in its main collection in 1988 before jumpstarting dedicated lines. Since 2019, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake has unveiled its new collections during Paris Men’s Fashion Week, oftentimes mounting performance shows that have been a favorite among attendees. The Japanese designer died in 2022.
Last January the brand skipped its Paris show ahead of the roving format announcement. Its spot in the city’s fashion week calendar was replaced by Issey Miyake’s four-year-old IM Men line, which was created in 2021 with the aim of developing clothing that integrates design and engineering.
