Issey Miyake
REVIEW
COMPLETE COLLECTION
PARIS, July 5, 2006
By
Let's assume the World Cup is behind fashion's current fascination with all things athletic, because it's clearly a global phenomenon. Naoki Takizawa weighed in with a Japanese take in his last collection as the creative director of Issey Miyake, but he adopted a very genteel stance, claiming inspiration from the green of playing fields and the white of chalk lines, tokens to him of an era before ESPN and multimillion-dollar contracts. His chosen color scheme played out in the green detailing on saddle shoes, the green top-stitching on a white jacket, and the chalky white of a pair of tracksuit-styled leather pants.Inspired perhaps by the numbers on a scoreboard, he blew up the numerals on his coats and jackets until they had an almost abstract graphic quality (witness the huge "7" on a car coat). And it wouldn't be a Miyake collection if there weren't some tricky fabrics. Here, shiny suit linings were used for a pajamalike two-piece, Japanese paper was hand-knit into an artisanal top, and a white suit had been hand-painted (in green, of course) with a floral motif and then washed, making the dye bleed quite intriguingly. Takizawa now advances to the majors in his own right. His replacement comes from the Miyake design studio's farm team.
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