Issey Miyake Homme Plisse Turtleneck

The story behind this garment is unusually well documented. Steve Jobs met Issey Miyake through Akio Morita of Sony, for whom Miyake had designed employee uniforms, and after an attempt to introduce a company-wide uniform at Apple was firmly rejected by its staff, the idea narrowed to a uniform for one person. Jobs asked Miyake for black turtlenecks and Miyake made him roughly a hundred of them, which Jobs later showed to his biographer stacked in his closet with the remark that he had enough to last the rest of his life. It is probably the most recognisable single garment of the last forty years, and it belongs to this house.

This is the house returning to that idea rather than reissuing it. The differences are deliberate and they matter: it is cut with a mock neck rather than a folded turtleneck, and the body is boxier than the close original. Where the Jobs turtleneck was a garment designed to disappear so completely that it stopped being a clothing decision at all, this one has a shape of its own. And it is pure cotton, which in a line otherwise built entirely on pleated polyester makes it the outlier here in every respect.

Why we selected it

It is a piece of design history that is also an extremely good plain black cotton top, and those two things rarely arrive in the same garment. The boxier cut is what keeps it from being a costume.

The black turtleneck Issey Miyake made for Steve Jobs is among the most widely recognised garments the house has ever produced, and this is a later reworking of it.

Materials and construction

100% cotton, made in Japan, in black. Mock neck, boxier fit.

Fit notes

Boxier through the body than a conventional turtleneck, so it hangs rather than clings. The mock neck sits at the throat without folding over. Being cotton rather than pleated polyester, it does not open out in wearing the way the rest of the line does, so size it as you would an ordinary knit.

Styling

A plain black cotton top with a clean neckline goes with everything, which was the original point. The boxier cut means it sits well under a jacket without bunching, and over a pleated trouser from the line it is a quietly complete outfit.

Care

Treat it as the cotton knit it is: wash cool, reshape while damp, and dry flat rather than hanging, since a wet knit will stretch under its own weight. Our fabric care guide has a section on cotton.

Related pieces

The Basics Shirt and the Basics Jacket are what it was made to go under, and the Compleat Trousers are the sharpest thing to wear it with. There is more on the house on the Issey Miyake designer page. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.