Issey Miyake Hatching Pleats Dress – Dark Brown

The hatching family reaches its plainest and best form here. Double pleating run in two crossed directions makes a single-coloured cloth read tonally, so the surface has depth and shifting shadow with no pattern and no second dye involved. Cut as a long-sleeved midi with a crewneck, the dress gives that surface the largest uninterrupted area in the family to work across, and almost nothing else to look at: no collar, no fastening, no detail competing with the cloth. It is the most restrained garment in the hatching group and the one where the technique is most completely the point. Long sleeves keep the column unbroken from shoulder to hem, which is what allows the tonal variation to be read as one continuous surface rather than as a set of panels.

The colour

Dark brown is the more unusual of the two and shows the technique better. Brown holds warmth in its lighter passages and depth in its darker ones, so the tonal variation the crossed pleating produces is more visible here than on a black ground, and the dress reads as having genuine shading rather than merely texture.

Of everything in the hatching family, the dress is where the double pleating has room to actually demonstrate itself. It is a single quiet garment that turns out to be doing something quite technical, which is the combination we look for.

100% polyester, made in Japan, in Dark Brown. Double pleated. A long-sleeved midi with a crewneck.

Midi length, crewneck, long sleeves. Pleated cloth carries far more material than its flat state suggests and opens in wearing, so it moves more generously than it appears to.

Dark brown is a better neutral than it is usually given credit for and sits beautifully against cream, camel, rust, and charcoal. It is the version to choose if the dress is going to be the only thing you are wearing.

The pleats are heat-set into the polyester and are permanent, so it washes without losing them. Miyake's own instruction is to wash at 30°C or below in a laundry net on a short cycle, or press gently by hand, and never to tumble dry, iron, steam, or dry clean, since the pleats are not heat-resistant. Store it rolled along the direction of the pleats. Our fabric care guide covers polyester and technical cloth.

The same dress in black is the sibling colourway. Then the Hatching Pleats Skirt, the Hatching Pleats Jacket, and the Hatching Bottoms. There is more on the house on the Issey Miyake designer page. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.