Bang for Your Buck: Homme Plissé Issey Miyake Trousers
- Words Jason Dike
- Date December 3, 2020
Everyone needs a pair of solid go-to trousers. Not quite utilitarian, but versatile enough to be worn to the bar, work, date or relaxing in. In light of global ow most of these activities take place at the same place—home—achieving comfort while not looking like you’ve succumbed to the “just wear sweatpants who’s gonna see me anyway” mentality is paramount. After all, what if you have to get up during a zoom meeting? Or need to artfully leave your legs in a shot of your coffee table IG shot? Good trousers are the new way to flex.
The trousers that achieve all of the above come from the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake line. The fashion insider’s favorite, the line has received a careful push from the designer over recent years. For the consumer, this means that getting a pair on Grailed is easier than ever but still rare enough that it’s a grail-worthy purchase.
Issey Miyake first began experimenting with micro-pleating, known as “plissé”, back in 1988 after a colleague was showing how they could pleat a polyester swatch. The first item to be made using the construction technique was T-shirts, which were introduced in the Spring/Summer 1989 collection. He would refine his methods before launching Pleats Please as a womenswear brand in 1993. The typical method for pleating would be to pleat the fabric and then cut the design from the fabric. Miyake upended this method by cutting the pattern first and then pleating the final item. This method means that the patterns often have to be oversized before being pleated, allowing the final product to feel loose and structured at the same time.
While Issey Miyake Homme Plissé trousers can retail for around $300 or more, you can find them on Grailed for less than $200. For a pair of trousers that not only comes from one of fashion’s most beloved designers, but intersects perfectly on the axes between “style” and “comfort”—it’s hard to not want to pick up a pair.
More About Hommé Plisse Issey Miyake Trousers
Homme Plissé, the menswear take on Pleats Please, was launched in 2013. The shapes for this line were boxier and looser than Pleats Please, focusing on menswear staple items and giving them the plissé treatment. The end result is a pair of trousers that feel as comfortable as sweatpants while looking sharp enough to receive compliments outside of the four walls of your home. Miyake’s take on clothing can be seen in a quote he gave to Pin-Up magazine, saying, “Clothing has a relationship to the body and, via the body, to the mind. They are inseparable. The space created between the clothes and the body is what interests me and communicates the most.”
Speaking to The Guardian in 2016, Miyake said, “The work of designing is to make something that works in real life.” And while Miyake likely didn’t anticipate these specific times, real life now consists of finding a pair of trousers versatile enough to be comfortable-but-respectable enough for life lived through lens your laptop’s built-in camera.
Want to know more about designer Issey Miyake? Read up here
Past finding a pair of pants? Browse more designs from Issey Miyake here.