It is quite strange how the past keeps persistently on coming back on the current runways with not many commentators and critics noticing it.
Take Issey Miyake's show. Models walked on the runway carrying flat metallic bags in the shape of half-circles. They put them on the floor, opened them and revealed, neatly folded inside, pieces of fabrics that they unfurled into pleated dresses and jackets.
The collection then continued with a series of garments - tailored jackets, blanket wraps and coats - with a nature inspired motif that may have been representing an abstract leaf print since the main theme of the collection was the rhythmic pulse of life in a forest.
More pleated pieces in a warm and rich autumnal palette characterised by voluminous shapes returned towards the end of the show. As a whole the collection by Yoshiyuki Miyamae was coherent and youthful with a casual and dynamic twist added.
The garments were based on two techniques: hand-pleating on the curve and steam stretch. The latter consists in computers programming steam heat to shrink jacquard fabrics into three-dimensional grooves that produce a series of tree ring-like undulated patterns.
A collection that displays so well special techniques is extremely exciting and technologically poetical: most fashion commentators are indeed taken by bright colours and visual effects that instantly generate and interest on the Internet, while it is important to bring back innovation on a textile level on the runway.
That said, while this pleasing moment of creativity obviously referenced Miyake's early garments like the ones photographed by Bill Cunningham for Details in the early '80s, older fashion critics and historians know that the emphasis on flat garments points towards someone else, Nanni Strada.
The Italian designer who developed pleated techniques and concertina-pleated garments created in the '80s garments ideal to travel, that she called "Torchon" dresses. Soon after she put them on the market Miyake produced his "Twist" dresses, based on the same idea. Interestingly enough, this collection also featured basic ponchos that called to mind Strada's minimalist capes successfully exported to Russia in 1983.
Miyake's show was accompanied by Chiyako Maeda on the vocals and by musician Ei Wada who played a guitar connected to giant strings and, while that was all cool, energetic, interesting and fun, if you knew your fashion history, you felt a tiny bit disappointed thinking that many have forgotten early flexible, collapsible and pleated dresses and the designer who first created them.
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