Issey Miyake Wooly Pleats Cardigan

Pleating a cloth vertically and horizontally at once stops it folding and starts it crimping, and the resulting surface has the springy, slightly crushed hand of a light wool despite containing no wool whatsoever. That is where the name comes from. What distinguishes this cardigan from the rest of the Wooly Pleats work is the fibre: it is made from recycled polyester rather than virgin, which matters more here than it would elsewhere, because the entire premise of the garment is that a synthetic can be made to behave like a natural fibre through geometry alone. Doing that with reclaimed material is a better version of the same argument. Cut open at the front with a round neck and finishing at the hip, it is the least demanding shape in the family, and khaki is a usefully unglamorous colour for it.

Getting a woolly hand out of polyester by pleating alone is clever. Getting it out of recycled polyester is the same cleverness with a better material behind it.

Making one material behave like another is a recurring Issey Miyake proposition, and cross-pleating is the most direct route to it.

100% recycled polyester, made in Japan, in khaki. Cross-pleated vertically and horizontally. Open front, round neck, hip length.

Hip length with an open front, so there is nothing to fasten and the fit is forgiving. Cross-pleated cloth compresses a great deal and opens as it is worn, so it sits more generously in motion than at rest.

Khaki is a genuine neutral and takes black, cream, olive, and rust equally. As an open layer it goes over almost anything, and the crimped texture reads best against something smooth beneath it.

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. Our fabric care guide covers polyester and technical cloth.

The Wooly Pleats Shirt is the same technique in virgin polyester at shirt length, which makes the material comparison a real one. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.