Dear Shaded Viewers,
The foot becomes a laboratory, and walking turns into an experiment in sensation. Between fabric and floor, ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT traces a new alphabet of movement, spelling out a future where the shoe is less an accessory than an extension of the body.
Born from the long, quiet dialogue between MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO and ASICS, this project does not arrive as a novelty but as the natural outcome of years of shared obsession: how to let the body move more freely by designing the structures that surround it. One house comes from the world of a single, imaginative piece of cloth; the other from the science of sport and the disciplined study of muscles, tendons, pressure, and impact. Together, they turn their attention to the most humble, most intimate point of contact with the world: the foot.
ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT begins not with ornament but with research. ASICS brings the knowledge of its Institute of Sport Science, where the body is filmed, measured, tested, slowed down into data and then reaccelerated into performance. MDS brings its own form of investigation, one that starts from the abstract line of a pattern and ends in the living contour of a body in motion. The collaboration feels less like a meeting and more like two different kinds of intelligence coming to rest in the same place.
The first expression of this encounter is HYPER TAPING, unveiled on the Paris runway for the IM MEN Spring–Summer 2026 collection and destined for the street a few months later. The name suggests both velocity and intimacy: the taping of an athlete’s foot before a match, the careful wrapping of ligaments, the quiet preparation before impact. HYPER TAPING looks to the ASICS Stripes, those graphic bands that once served not only as a symbol but as a functional reinforcement for the shoe’s structure. Here, that idea is extended and exaggerated into thick elastic bands that cross the upper, gripping the foot, drawing bold lines that are as structural as they are visual.
The shoe becomes a kind of soft architecture. The taping concept is no longer just tape; it is engineered tension, a series of elastic trajectories that stabilise the body while allowing it to flow. Quilted tongues cushion the front of the ankle; the zones around the heel and malleolus are calibrated so that the foot feels held, not caged. There is a sense of protection, but also of exposure: the shoe is not hiding the foot, it is articulating it.
Underneath, another story unfolds. A wrestling outsole is reinterpreted as a sneaker platform, the sole curling up around the lower part of the upper like a second skin that has learned to climb. The inspiration moves from the mat to the animal world: the gecko’s foot, with its improbable grip and almost surreal adhesion, becomes a model for traction and stability. On the ground, this translates into a silhouette that appears to spring forward, a stance ready to twist, pivot, stop, and start again.
Inside, the shoe chooses comfort as its silent manifesto. The narrow, combative outline inherited from the original wrestling sole is widened, allowing the foot more space to breathe and expand through the day. A SPEVA midsole and a soft Ortholite insole compose a layered cushioning system, thin yet supportive, so that the foot is never too far from the ground, but never fully exposed to it either. It is the kind of comfort that does not announce itself loudly; it simply makes walking feel strangely natural, as if the shoe has always known the way the wearer moves.
The upper is a collage of tactility. Different leathers and mesh panels are composed like fragments of a garment, each surface catching light and shadow in its own register. Color becomes another way of framing the body: a fluorescent green that pulses with kinetic energy, a total black that absorbs and concentrates it, a complete grey that softens it into quiet neutrality. Each shade is chosen not to shout but to align seamlessly with the silhouettes of the ISSEY MIYAKE universe, sliding into coats, trousers, and pleats as if they had been conceived together from the start.
What emerges from ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT is not just a collection of shoes, but a new territory where sport and design are no longer opposites but parallel disciplines drawing closer. The archives of ASICS are filtered through the lens of MDS, and the technologies of ISSEY MIYAKE are pushed toward new functions under the influence of ASICS know-how. It is a long-term research project disguised as an everyday object, a piece that can step straight from the laboratory into the street.
In the background stands MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO, founded in 1970 and still guided by the idea of a piece of cloth, now expanded to include the piece that meets the pavement. Alongside it, ASICS continues its pursuit of high-performance products that carry sport into daily life, joining functionality and style in a single gesture. ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT sits at their intersection: a quiet revolution at ground level, where the act of walking becomes a deliberate, designed experience.
