Issey Miyake Hatching Pleats Jacket

A single-breasted blazer is a set of conventions: a lapel, a button stance, a waist. What is unusual here is that all of them have been drawn in double-pleated cloth, a fabric with texture, give, and no interfacing, which is the opposite of what a blazer is normally built from. The slight cinch at the waist is doing the work a tailor's shaping would ordinarily do, and it works because pleated cloth gathers willingly and releases again. So the jacket reads as tailoring from across a room and as something entirely soft the moment you touch it. The crossed hatching gives black a tonal variation that a flat suiting cloth would not have, which is what stops it from looking like an ordinary blazer at any distance.

A blazer with no structure in it that still holds a blazer's line is a hard thing to make, and this one is considerably easier to wear than any tailored equivalent.

Producing the effect of tailoring without tailoring is a long-standing Issey Miyake pursuit, and this jacket is that pursuit in its most recognisable form.

100% polyester, made in Japan, in black. Double pleated, single-breasted, with a slightly cinched silhouette.

Single-breasted with a slight cinch at the waist. Pleated cloth gives and opens as it is worn, so it accommodates more than its flat shape suggests, and it will not feel restrictive across the back the way a structured jacket can.

It goes over almost anything, and the tonal hatch means it does not read as a plain black jacket. Over the Hatching Pleats Skirt it becomes a full hatched look, which holds together because the texture is identical.

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 rather than hung, which is the opposite of what one does with a blazer and is correct here. Our fabric care guide covers polyester and technical cloth.

The Hatching Pleats Skirt, the Hatching Pleats 2 Dress, and the Hatching Bottoms carry the same double pleating. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.