Dear Shaded Viewers,
The ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer 2026 show at Centre Pompidou unfolded as a living tapestry—garments animated, themes unfurling as acts in a poetic ballet where the body became both subject and canvas.
This season’s collection embarked from the surreal hypothesis: what if garments possessed self-awareness? The result was a palpable sense of intention within every silhouette, as if clothing itself reacted and interacted with the wearer. The ARMS theme introduced playful dissonance, sleeve placements challenging conventions and inviting choreography—garments alive in their movement, never static, always improvising.
GENERIC WEAR explored the dreamlike growth and evolution of clothing—hoodies and tees transformed, shedding old forms and hinting at metamorphosis. This concept played out across familiar silhouettes, which were reimagined for a sense of organic fluidity, echoing the mutability of living things. In the PEU FORM3 series, artificial leather shapes proliferated, wrapping bodies in sheets that evoked the multiplying forms of living organisms, subverting traditional tailoring for expansive, sculptural effect.
A SHOPPERS BODY made visible the fever of desire: garments constructed from thin, stretchy jersey molded around the wearer, defined with pockets in unexpected places—a poetic nod to insatiable consumption and the contours it imprints upon identity. CONCEALED, by contrast, wrapped the body with tubular volumes, focusing not on what was worn but on the spaces revealed, the voids made visible—sculptural absence as artistic revelation.
PALINDROME blurred boundaries between interior and exterior; shirts became linings, and linings became shirts—what was hidden could just as easily be revealed, inviting the wearer to redefine the limits between self and clothing. ADVENTITIOUS garments grew in all directions, sleeves and openings sprouting in unpredictable places, each layer granting new possibilities and encouraging expressive interpretation, suggesting that true vitality emerges from embrace of chance and multiplicity.
URBAN JUNGLE Jersey channeled the resilience of windmill palms—their vigorous urban growth translated into pleated, structured fabrics, with photographic prints capturing the energy of city flora. Each garment became wearable vitality, an echo of nature’s persistent artistry. Complementing these tactile elements, the show’s soundscape—composed by Tarek Atoui—wove together the acoustic textures of textiles, stone, water, and drumskins, amplifying the fusion of organic and fabricated, the living and the crafted.
In this ensemble of sentient clothing, the coats—ethereal, light as air—stood out like soft brushstrokes in a larger painting. Their airy construction echoed the collection’s wider aspiration: to render the body as the ultimate work of art, every movement an act of creation, every garment a breath of intention in an ongoing, living performance.
ISSEY MIYAKE’s Spring Summer 2026 was more than a runway—it was a meditation on becoming, on garments that breathe, grow, conceal, and reveal; where fashion is not simply worn, but lived and felt as cinematic art.
Later,
Diane
