Issey Miyake's Spring/Summer 2020 collection presented on Friday 27th of September during Paris Fashion Week was long-awaited. The brand's new artistic director, Satoshi Kondo, who succeeded Yoshiyuki Miyamae as head of the women's line, did not disappoint on his first show, following the footsteps of its predecessor, while at the same time imposing his style injecting the brand with a fresher, younger feel.

Satoshi Kondo, born in Kyoto in 1984, graduated from Ueda College of Fashion. Before becoming artistic director of Issey Miyake, he spent more than 13 years working for Issey Miyake. He first worked as a member of PLEATS PLEASE ISSEY MIYAKE design team, and later became the brand's designer. Then started working asthe designer of HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE.

For his first show, Satoshi Kondo concentrated on the constructing and layering of innovative textiles developed by the Japanese brand in recent years. The Spring/Summer 2020 collection thus focused much less on Issey Miyake's pleated icons, and more on concrete and practical fashion with a majority of interchangeable monochrome pieces.The designer emphasized the versatility of the garment adapting it to today's frenetic life, while preserving its poetry.

For the final, multicolored pleated dresses, also made in layers of different lengths, descended from the sky onto the models' bodies, who then danced frenetically like dervishes.The parade ended in a large round, where all the girls, in colourful dresses, held hands in the same joyful impulse.

Satoshi Kondo states: "I didn't try to go back to the brand's origins. I just wanted to interpret and modernize the Issey Miyake spirit in my own way. (...) I wanted to express the joy of wearing clothes and the joy of movement. So you see the models dancing, almost like in the wind, moving together.”

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