At Pitti Immagine Uomo 108, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake introduced its SS26 collection under the title Amid Impasto of Horizons. Invited as Guest of Honor, the brand selected the Villa Medicea della Petraia, a historic Florentine site with ties to the Medici family, as the site for a dual-format presentation combining performance and exhibition. This marked the launch of Open Studio, a new project set to bring the label’s work to previously unvisited contexts worldwide.
Rooted in observational design, the SS26 collection responds to the everyday textures, objects, and colors found across Italy. Rather than rely on conventional references, the team approached the creative process like painters working on-site. They collected tones from city walls, shadows, and sky lines, using those impressions to shape fabrics and silhouettes. Each piece developed as an interpretation of movement through urban and natural environments, with a focus on materials and their interaction with the body.
Designers Andrea Faraguna and Michael Kleine composed the spatial presentation, which responded to the architecture and gardens of the villa. They introduced a sprinkler installation to quietly animate the grounds, suggesting how the site might once have felt during more active periods.
Within the collection, key series took form through function and surface research. Painter’s Gear focuses on utility, offering multi-pocket garments intended to carry art tools or daily objects. Worn as outer layers, these designs prioritize flexibility. Tailored Pleats introduces new suiting shapes, including long collarless jackets and an elongated double-breasted style.
Palette and Paint Brush Close-Up translate studio traces into prints. Palette draws directly from the team’s paint-mixing boards, while Paint Brush Close-Up magnifies pigment build-up on bristles. These details turn process into pattern, allowing the garments to carry evidence of their making. Another group, Carrier Carried, imagines what happens when clothing borrows the structure of its own packaging. These garments fold down into shapes reminiscent of garment bags, suggesting both portability and purpose.
For footwear, the Cioccolato shoe debuts with a hybrid toe construction, a combination of oblique and chisel shapes. The surface references the form of a chocolate bar, with a matte texture adding contrast to the silhouette’s clean geometry.
Open Studio, launched alongside the collection, introduces a traveling format that invites public access to the brand’s development process. Drawing from the concept of artists opening their studios to visitors, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake applies this framework to design. Rather than separate audience from technique, the label creates space for people to engage with the thought, research, and trial that precede final garments.
The first Open Studio included an exhibition curated by the Misawa Design Institute at Nippon Design Center, developed in close collaboration with the brand’s team. This display tracked the progression from field research to form-making, showing how ideas collected from walks, objects, and environments eventually turn into wearable structures.
Throughout the exhibition, installations displayed material tests, prototypes, and textile treatments developed across Italian cities. Each section reflected on how process-driven exploration informs the finished designs. Sculptural fabric studies extended the research beyond garments, experimenting with the physicality of pleated material through folding, wrapping, and spatial arrangements.
