How Issey Miyake’s innovative pleats continue to inspire generations of designers

Pleats have been around for decades but micro-pleating, or plissé, is having a reboot as designers take inspiration for spring from Issey Miyake’s innovative Pleats Please line of the 1990s.

The reference was particularly strong at Jil Sander, where Rodolfo Paglialunga explored both volume and pleating in his spring-summer 2017 collection for dresses and skirts, using shades of honey, peach, light blue and primrose. The pleats gave a streamlined look to skirts and lateral pleating provided volume around the shoulders and sleeves – and bounced like springs as the models moved.

Haider Ackermann is known for his draping and wrapping, so ultra-fine pleating is a new development for him. His Miyake-style pleating for spring offers an elongating effect and works whether in black, nude, copper or a dynamic metallic chartreuse, as seen on a long plissé tank dress and a pantsuit.

The earliest experiments in creating finely pleated dresses took place in Venice at the start of the 20th century, by Mariano Fortuny. They were based on ancient Greek tunics and used yards and yards of richly coloured silk in a secret process. These fluid plissé gowns caused an outcry at the time for how they clung to the body. Fortuny dresses are held in museums or fetch high prices at auction.

Micro-pleating today uses heat and pressure to keep lightweight polyester material in shape, whereas Fortuny’s customers would have to return their silk gowns if the pleats needed to be reset.

Miyake began his experiments in fine pleating in 1988, and the first pieces appeared in his Issey Miyake spring-summer 1989 collection.