Overstimulation is a common symptom in the fashion industry fueled by sensationalism. We all feel it, from the audiences watching the shows to the people creating their visual worlds behind the scenes. Naturally, I gravitate towards fashion that respects a certain purity in creation, an approach Issey Miyake has long upheld. For Spring/Summer 2027, Satoshi Kondo offered a welcome sense of relief. There was something restorative in the show’s beauty and clarity of purpose: it was about the clothes and our relationship with them.
Before looking more closely at Figure of Ma (a fitting title for Satoshi Kondo’s body of work, and a principle I had already noted in my review of his Fall/Winter 2026 collection), three Japanese terms help me understand Kondo’s Miyake a little more: katachi (形), meaning form; makoto (真), truth; and, lastly, kotowari (理), reason.
Firstly, FORM, or katachi (形), begins with clothing as a form in its own right, then extends to the body and the spaces in between. The Dojo de Paris served as the ideal setting to show the importance of negative space in perceiving fashion. Our first encounter with the collection came through a large piece of fabric, its movement inspiring a sense of awe in the visceral performance by Tess Voelker and her fellow dancers. Accompanied by pianist Koki Nakano’s resonant composition, the performance focused our attention on the form of clothing as it was reintroduced on the all-black runway.
Here, the intangible form becomes perceptible to the senses through makoto (真), or TRUTH. Craftsmanship, approached as a discipline, lies at the core of the house’s philosophy, giving an idea its physical form. The only truth is craft. Every season, Kondo seems to push the sensory possibilities of clothing further, always with remarkable elegance. COCOON BODY, created in collaboration with Wacoal Corp., adapts the company’s Melooop three-dimensional molding technology. Damp garments draped on torso mannequins are 3D-scanned to create molds onto which melted resin is sprayed, preserving both the body’s contours and the memory of wearing.
Among my favorite looks were the purple top paired with draped grey tailoring, the pale-yellow bustier above voluminous brown trousers, and the grey torso-shaped top worn with black tailoring. The tops trace the body’s contours, while the tailoring allows fabric to fall more freely around it. This exploration continues through FLUIGLYPH, a series of seamless knits whose rippling stitches evoke the fluid motion of water. In the blue silhouette (look 10), their flowing curves give the knit a sculptural presence.
Pleats and draping are reworked through TEMPO PLEATS, whose horizontal folds bounce with movement. In the yellow silhouette, generous panels fall around the body, with the fabric continuing over the head.
CAPRICE, meanwhile, uses a bi-tubular construction, partially joining three rectangular pieces of fabric to layer colour and give the pleats dimension. In look thirty-seven, red, cream and brown panels overlap and fall away from the body. BILLOW extends this exploration of space through airy silhouettes that create a natural interval between body and clothes. Made from a single piece of light, sheer fabric, they make that interval visible through volume and movement, particularly in the sky-blue ensemble and the billowing brown trousers worn beneath a black COCOON BODY top.
Lastly, REASON, or kotowari (理), places Figure of Ma within a longer Issey Miyake inquiry into the concept of ma. In fact, Miyake himself participated in the 1978 exhibition MA: Espace-Temps du Japon, conceived by architect Arata Isozaki and held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris as part of the Festival d’Automne, from October 11 to December 11, 1978.
For Kumo-Juttai (Cloud - Ten Bodies), he designed monastic robes for figures created by doll sculptor Simon Yotsuya. Presented in Yami, the section devoted to darkness, the work drew on the image of unsui, monks pursuing Zen teachings. Clothing shaped the presence of a body within space, a relationship I see Kondo returning to in Figure of Ma.
Beyond this continuity, I believe Kondo also asks us to become informed participants in his work: to recognise what disciplined design makes possible, and what the wearer brings to it. As Issey Miyake himself told TIME in 1985:
“Without the wearer’s ingenuity, my clothing isn’t clothing. These are clothes where room is left for wearers to make things their own.”
The wearer, then, participates in giving the garment its identity. In Figure of Ma, that participation becomes visible whenever the fabric moves with the body, changing the space between them. The lightness explored in BILLOW finds its fullest expression in BALLOONING, particularly the lavender coat and its pale-pink counterpart. Their fine nylon ripstop takes in air as the wearer moves, while drawstrings gather the hems into rounded silhouettes. The collection’s thesis becomes beautifully tangible: the space around the body is itself a source of form.
For me, this is where form, truth and reason meet: in clothing whose meaning continues to take shape with the person wearing it. Amid the industry’s overstimulation, there was something restorative in being brought back to that relationship, and in finding so much beauty within it.
