As Paris wilted under the ruthless June sun, Issey Miyake sent out a battalion of intergalactic fashion soldiers at the Cartier Foundation Thursday, shimmering 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 in the midst of transition. In January, Paris bid adieu to Homme Plisse - Miyake's pleated cult favorite that had anchored the city's menswear calendar since 2019 - 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 Issey Miyake before his death in 2022. Thursday's show marked IM Men's return to the Paris stage, under the direction of designers Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura, and Nobutaka Kobayashi.
A kinetic dance of light and fabric
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.