Issey Miyake Pleats Please Monthly Colors: August Dress – Grass Green

Monthly Colors assigns a colour to a month and works it through the line, which is a genuinely odd and rather lovely way to run a collection: the garment is dated by its hue rather than by a season or a number. August is grass green, a fully saturated, unhedged green with no grey in it, and putting it on a sleeveless slim dress with a high neck means there is nothing at all between the colour and the viewer. No collar, no sleeve, no fastening visible. The vertical pleating is what keeps a solid block of strong colour from going flat, since the folds hold light and shadow in narrow alternating bands and the green consequently reads as several greens at once.

A colour this committed needs a shape this simple, and the pleating is what stops it from being a single flat note.

The Monthly Colors series is one of the longest-running ideas in Issey Miyake's work, and the dresses are where it is most concentrated.

100% polyester, made in Japan, in Grass Green. Sleeveless, slim-fitting, with a high neck.

Slim and sleeveless with a high neck. Pleated cloth opens out in wearing, so it accommodates more than the flat garment suggests. The high neck and bare shoulder set the whole proportion.

It is a single statement and does not want a second one. Neutral accessories, nothing patterned. Under a dark open coat the green becomes a stripe of colour, which is the other good way to wear it.

The pleats are heat-set into the polyester and are permanent, so it washes 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 it rolled along the direction of the pleats. Our fabric care guide covers polyester and technical cloth.

The Monthly Colors January Dress is the winter counterpart. The Monthly Colors July Shirt and the May Shirt are the shirts from the same series. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.