Issey Miyake Pleats Please Mushroom Knit Top

Almost every garment ever made looks like a heap when it is put down. This one looks like a mushroom, deliberately, and the fact that the house says so out loud is the point rather than a curiosity. Designing the flat state means treating the garment as an object with two conditions rather than as clothing with a storage problem, and it forces every seam and every pleat direction to serve two purposes at once. Worn, the horizontal pleating and the balloon sleeves produce volume that gathers and releases around the arm. Laid down, those same pleats collapse in the one sequence that makes the outline resolve into a cap and a stem. The engineering required to satisfy both readings simultaneously is considerable, and none of it is visible while you are wearing it. Horizontal pleats are the harder orientation, too: they run against the direction the garment hangs, so they have to fight gravity rather than follow it, which is what gives the sleeve its inflation.

A garment that is composed in two states, and that tells you what the second one is, is a rare and genuinely delightful thing. The balloon sleeve is the part you will actually wear, and it is worth having on its own terms.

Designing the flat state of a garment is a preoccupation that runs from Issey Miyake's earliest work through to the folding series, and this top is its most cheerful expression.

100% polyester, made in Japan, in white. Horizontal pleating with balloon sleeves. The garment folds flat into a mushroom shape.

Horizontally pleated cloth opens outward rather than downward, so this reads as volume around the body rather than length. The balloon sleeve is generous through the upper arm and gathers toward the wrist. Pleated garments hold far more cloth than the flat piece suggests, so expect it to inflate as it is worn.

White and voluminous above wants something narrow and dark below, or it becomes all volume. The sleeve is the feature, so nothing should go over it.

The pleats are heat-set into the polyester, which is why they are permanent and why 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 Light Wave Shirt also builds movement into a sleeve. The 132 5. Solid Top and the 132 5. Solid Jacket in the main line are the most rigorous version of the flat-state idea. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.