132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE
Overview
132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE is one of the house’s most explicit research brands, launched in 2010 from the work of Reality Lab. and built around the passage from flatness to volume. Its name describes the system itself: ① one piece of cloth, ③ a three-dimensional form, ② a return to the two-dimensional plane, and ⑤ a fifth dimension created when the wearer brings the garment to life. ◉ The final period suggests the space and connection between clothing and body, turning the name into a compact diagram of the brand’s entire logic.
Within the Issey Miyake universe, 132 5. sits close to A-POC and IN-EI ISSEY MIYAKE, but its language is distinct. It is not a pleating line by default, nor a conventional seasonal fashion brand dressed in technical vocabulary. Its force lies in the drama of conversion itself: cloth, fold, body and object caught in a precise little coup de théâtre of engineering.
Philosophy
The philosophy of 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE is transformation made wearable. Its name describes a sequence of states: one piece of cloth, three-dimensional form, two-dimensional flatness, and a further dimension of use, experience and imagination. The numbers are less cryptic branding than a compact manifesto, turning the garment into a problem of movement through space.
That makes 132 5. one of Miyake’s clearest arguments for fashion as structural thought. Folding is not ornament here; it is method, memory and mechanism. The brand treats recycled and reworked materials, geometric construction and flat-to-volume engineering as part of the same inquiry, producing clothing that feels less assembled than released from its own hidden diagram.
Recent events
Disclaimer
Creative timeline
Button TextFolded Forms, Formed Reflections extends the public reading of 132 5. through folded structure, reflection and spatial display. It belongs as an exhibition/research milestone, not a product-drop row.
The 2012 Designs of the Year Fashion Award recognised 132 5. beyond a normal product launch, reinforcing the line’s position between clothing, design research and institutional reception.
The summer 2010 Tokyo and Paris introduction brought 132 5.’s flat-to-volume research into public view before the line’s recorded November launch.
The November 2010 launch of 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE converted Reality Lab. research into a commercial research brand built around folding, recycled material development and flat-to-volume transformation.
The REALITY LAB exhibition at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT gave the research environment around 132 5. a public institutional form, connecting the line to design experimentation rather than only fashion-season output.
The 2007 R&D work by Issey Miyake and Reality Lab. is the origin point for 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE. It precedes the public introduction and defines the line through folding, flatness, volume and material research.
