When Garments Take the Lead

This season's Issey Miyake asks us to flip the script: what if clothing had its own agency, its own voice? In SS26, Kondo imagines a world where garments are no longer silent accompaniments to the body but participants in presence. The show-titled "Being Garments, Being Sentient” unfolds in Centre Pompidou with designs that tug, extend, wrap, and sometimes almost escape their wearers. It's a collection that feels like part philosophy, part costume, part choreographed experiment.

The opening feels deceptively calm: crisp shirts, hoodies, polos—familiar forms. Yet subtle distortions begin immediately: shoulders puffed, hems lifted, sleeves dangling, opening cuts in jackets that force new rituals of dressing. The twist is that these distortions are less about shock and more about making us question: who is dressing who?

The materials betray the concept's core. Fabrics are engineered to shift: supple faux leathers, netted scuba-like knits, ribbed cottons, sheers. Pants sprout panels at the hips. Some jackets have displaced openings. In one of the more theatrical moments, outer layers seem to cling and compress, then pull away, releasing folds and revealing inner shapes.

Graphic prints, mismatched hues, plant motifs occasionally punctuate the more sculptural pieces, but even these are subjected to distortion—prints cut, layered, interrupted. Cutouts and asymmetry are not tools for display alone, but for transformation. Movement matters; silhouettes evolve with each step.

There's something slightly uncanny in SS26—that sense of garments that don't quite settle. As much as they follow the body, they also pull away, push forward, demand freedom. The show feels like watching something alive breathing: teasing, resisting, trying to shape itself. The tension is between what is wearable and what questions wearability. Between what is beautiful and what is strange.

The emotional range moves from almost domestic familiarity (tees, polos, seemingly neutral basics) into moments of high conceptual drama: sleeves replaced by extra panels, bodies wrapped, elements of practical clothing reworked into sculptural prosthetics of sorts. It suggests a journey: from what clothes are expected to do to what they might want to become.

"What if clothes were alive?" isn't just a tag—it’s lived through each seam, cut, asymmetry. The coherence between idea and execution is impressive. The mix of familiar fabrics with engineered and distorted shapes makes the collection feel sharp and new while still rooted in Miyake's tradition of sculptural, movement-aware cloth. There are standout moments that will linger—garments that twist, clothes that don't simply hang but interact. The spectacle is not merely for spectacle's sake, but to provoke thought.

Some distortion risks tipping into theatricality over utility. Looks that force new ways of putting on a piece might be striking on the runway but harder in daily dressing. Too much shape distortion or weird cutouts, and some designs run the risk of seeming gimmicky. The subtle ones are strongest. Color and print are used more sparingly than the structural effects; this is mostly good, but in some spots, the visual weight could feel heavy or dissonant without enough breathing space.

Issey Miyake SS26 is one of those shows that reminds you fashion can still ask questions—not just about trends, but about our relationship to clothing itself. This season isn't comfortable; it isn't meant to be. It's meant to unsettle, to make you aware of what you wear, how you wear it, and what role clothes might play beyond mere covering.

In SS26, Miyake doesn't just reveal pieces; he asks us to witness garments with wills, identities, maybe desires. The collection challenges passivity: in beauty, in dress, in self-presentation. For that, it feels both necessary and thrilling.