Issey, You Say

The new head designer of Issey Miyake, 36-year-old Satoshi Kondo, aspires to make his mark on the Japanese house without forsaking its storied history

Issey Miyake’s new head designer Satoshi Kondo aspires to make his mark without forsaking the house’s storied history

Satoshi Kondo began to draw with a red pencil. He scratched lightly on the back of a press release, illustrating an outline of the final look from his latest collection— one garment comprised of several knitted tops that were connected by their sleeves. His interpreter and I stared in silence at this unexpected gesture from a designer who, after commanding the fashion world’s attention with his debut collection for Issey Miyake last September, remains somewhat elusive.

“This look is called ‘Hand in Hand,’” says Kondo. “It’s one continuous knit with various fabrics fused together so that there’s always a piece of the previous garment in the next.” He then flipped the pencil over and with its end poked around the page. “We didn’t express this explicitly at the show but, based on my sketches, each piece should have been the same size, but because of the property of the material—wool or polyester might shrink or cotton might expand—the finished products varied. Some turned out smaller, some larger. With this ‘Whole Garment’ method, you never know what you’re going to get.”