Issey Miyake Fit Pants

Ninety-two percent nylon is a sportswear composition, and the eight percent of polyurethane beside it is what turns a light woven into something that moves with the body and returns. Applied to a cropped trouser on an elastic waist, it produces a garment with essentially nothing in it: no zip, no button, no lining, no interfacing. What is left is cloth and cut, and the cut has to carry everything. The colour is worth naming, because the house named it: Leaves Brown, a muted, slightly dulled brown that behaves like a neutral without being one. It is the sort of shade that reads differently in daylight and under lamps, which is a great deal of the pleasure of wearing it.

Why we selected it

It solves the travel trouser problem without looking like a travel trouser, which almost nothing does. The colour is the other half of the reason.

Miyake’s studio has always treated technical cloth as ordinary rather than special, and this is that habit applied to a garment you would otherwise wear without thinking.

Materials and construction

92% nylon and 8% polyurethane, made in Japan, in Leaves Brown. Lightweight, with stretch and recovery from the polyurethane. The waist is elastic.

Fit notes

Cropped, with a comfortable rather than close fit. The elastic waist means it sits where you put it. Nylon of this weight moves with you rather than resisting, so it feels considerably less formal than it looks.

Styling

The muted brown is more useful than black here, because it takes both warm and cool colours beside it. A knit with some weight balances how light the trouser is. It packs flat, which is the argument for taking it somewhere.

Care

Wash cool and keep heat off it. Nylon and polyurethane both suffer in a hot dryer, and the recovery is the whole point of the garment. See our fabric care guide for technical cloth.

Related pieces

The Campagne Pant is the structured alternative in a related family of blends, and the Monthly Colors March Straight-Leg Pants answer the same travel question in pleated polyester. There is more on the house on the Issey Miyake designer page. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.