Gorgeous book charts Issey Miyake's revolutionary Pleats Please collection

Few clothing collections can claim to be truly revolutionary (although many press releases will have a go) but Issey Miyake’s 1993 Pleats Please can justly be designated as such.Cut and sewn from fabric that is nearly three times bigger than the final pieces, the garments are fed into a pleats machine to combine texture and form in a beautiful way.

Whether it’s shirts, skirts, trousers or cardigans, the collection was a triumph of style and wearability, rendered in bright bold colours that added another dimension.

A new book published by Taschen tells the story of this extraordinary development in fashion technology with beautiful shots of the finished pieces across the various iterations displayed alongside lovely behind-the-scenes production images. It’s written by  Midori Kitamura, a former employee of the designer who is thus perfectly-placed to give an interesting and insightful account of the Pleats Please range but as so often with Taschen this book’s appeal resides predominantly in the gorgeous visuals.