Issey Miyake Homme Plissé Drawing Press Trousers

Ronan Bouroullec is best known as a designer, one half of a practice that has shaped furniture and objects for three decades, but he also keeps a serious and continuous drawing practice, and it is that side of his work this collaboration draws on. The print is a transfer of abstract brushstrokes onto twill, and what makes it more than a printed trouser is what the pleating does to it afterwards. A brushstroke is a continuous gesture: it has a direction, a beginning, and a tapering end. Pleating the cloth breaks that gesture into vertical slices and hides roughly half of them at any viewing angle, so the mark is never seen whole. As the wearer moves, different slices come forward and the stroke reassembles differently each time. The drawing is effectively animated by the garment, which is a genuinely interesting thing to do with an artist's mark and not at all the usual outcome of a print collaboration. Pink against red is the right palette for it, two colours close enough in temperature that the brushwork reads as tonal movement rather than as a graphic.

Most print collaborations simply reproduce an artist's work on cloth. This one puts the mark through a process that changes how it can be seen, which is a real collaboration rather than a licence.

Working with artists and designers from outside the house is a long-standing habit at Issey Miyake, and Homme Plissé is where those collaborations tend to land.

100% polyester, made in Japan, in Pink x Red. Twill, with an abstract brushstroke transfer print created in collaboration with Ronan Bouroullec, carrying the signature pleating.

Pleated cloth opens as it is worn, so expect more room in motion than the flat garment shows. The print is distributed across the whole leg, so the trouser is the focal point of anything it is worn with.

These are the loudest thing in the line and should be treated accordingly: everything else plain, ideally black or a deep neutral. Worth wearing where there is room to move, since the print only does its full trick in motion.

The pleats are heat-set into the polyester and are permanent, so they wash without losing them. Wash at 30°C or below in a laundry net on a short cycle, or press gently by hand, and never tumble dry, iron, steam, or dry clean. Store rolled along the direction of the pleats. Our fabric care guide covers polyester and technical cloth.

The Heather Pleats Pants build pattern from yarn rather than print, and the Physiotype Satin in the main line is another printed piece. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.