PARIS — As Paris wilted under a ruthless June sun, Issey Miyake sent out a battalion of intergalactic fashion soldiers who shimmered at the Cartier Foundation Thursday between art and menswear apparel in a spectacle where even the light was a player.
The late-morning sun bounced sharply off the art museum's monumental steel pillars, forcing some guests to slide their seats to escape the dazzling reflections — an impromptu game of musical chairs set to a pulsing, kinetic soundtrack.
This Paris Fashion Week season finds the Miyake house amid transition. In January, Paris bid adieu to Homme Plissé — Miyake's pleated cult favorite that had anchored the city's menswear calendar since the last decade — as the brand shifted its focus to nomadic shows, most recently appearing under the Tuscan sun.
The torch in Paris has now been passed to IM Men, the last line personally conceived by iconic designer Issey Miyake before his death in 2022.
A kinetic dance of light and fabric
IM Men returned under the direction of designers Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura, and Nobutaka Kobayashi. The theme, ''Dancing Texture,'' nodded to the ceramic artistry of Shoji Kamoda, but also to the surreal choreography on display. Models appeared to roll, tilt, and swing through the light, their movements somewhere between ballet and a slow-motion video game. Occasionally, a guest would squint, unsure if they were watching a runway show or a heat-induced hallucination.
The crowd — equal parts Parisian cool, visiting editors, and those for whom a pleated culotte is a spiritual calling — dodged the sun's glare and fanned themselves in the heat, shifting for both comfort and the best sightline. The first model glided out in a mad, angular hat, setting the tone for a parade of tin man-meets-space ninja silhouettes designed for dance floors or distant planets.
The clothes themselves looked as if they had been engineered for a new climate — or perhaps a new species. Surfaces peeled, rippled, and shimmered, metallic foils flashed against the sun, and jacquard weaves evoked the carved waves of Kamoda's ceramics. Vermilion and white motifs burst forth alongside a near-neon green, courtesy of upcycled fishing nets. A coat unzipped into a dramatic collar while some blousons and pants, when laid flat, formed perfect circles — a wink at Kamoda's wheel-thrown plates.
