Issey Miyake Two as One Pants

The name is literal. There is an inner layer cut as a sleek, slim, straight-leg trouser, and an outer layer cut as a wide-legged short with a sharp crease, and the two are one garment. What you see is a short worn over a trouser, an arrangement people assemble themselves and which almost never sits correctly, because the two pieces were not designed to share a waistband or a proportion. Here they were. The outer crease falls where it should relative to the inner leg, the hems relate to each other deliberately, and the layering reads as a single considered silhouette rather than as two things at once. The material is what makes it possible: fifty-eight percent cupro and forty-two percent paper, woven. Cupro is a regenerated cellulose fibre with the fluidity and cool hand of silk, and it supplies the drape of the inner leg. The paper supplies the crispness that lets the outer short hold a sharp crease and stand away rather than collapsing onto the layer beneath it. Either fibre alone would fail at one half of the garment.

Layered trousers are a common idea and a rarely successful one, because the layers usually fight. This resolves the proportion problem by designing both halves at once, and the cupro-paper cloth is the reason the outer layer keeps its shape.

Building one garment that behaves like two is a proposition Issey Miyake's studio has returned to throughout its history, and this is among the most resolved versions.

58% cupro and 42% paper, woven, made in Japan, in black. The inner layer is a slim straight leg; the outer layer is a wide-leg short with a sharp crease.

The inner leg is slim and straight; the outer short is wide. Because the outer layer is crisp and stands off, the trouser occupies more space than a slim trouser and less than a wide one, and it reads as neither. The layers are fixed relative to one another, so there is nothing to adjust.

The silhouette is the whole statement, so keep the top half quiet and let the leg do it. A shoe with some presence suits the visible break between the two hems better than a delicate one. Matched with the Two as One Shirt it becomes a full look built from the same cloth.

The paper content puts this outside ordinary laundering. Treat it as a specialist clean, keep it dry, and do not press the outer crease in. Our fabric care guide is worth reading on the handling of unusual blends.

The Two as One Shirt is the matched half. The Enclothe Cardigan builds its structure from paper by a different route. Everything we carry from Issey Miyake is listed together.