On June 25, 2026, IM MEN unveiled its Spring/Summer 2027 collection, In Praise of Bamboo Shadows, at Césure, a cultural venue in Paris’s 5th arrondissement.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Carlo Scarpato (GoRunway)

The starting point this season was not bamboo itself, but the shadows it casts.

Contours that sway like waves. Layers of intersecting lines. Forms that emerge in light only to dissolve and transform moments later. Rather than treating bamboo as a decorative motif, IM MEN explored the subtle sensations that exist between presence and absence, translating them into clothing. The collection reinterprets the aesthetics of shadow, structure, and time embedded in Japanese and East Asian craft traditions through contemporary materials and techniques.

Wearing the Presence of Bamboo Rather Than Bamboo Itself

The collection originated from encounters with East Asian bamboo craftworks discovered by the design team at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Bamboo groves receding into mist in ink paintings. The intricate overlaps of branches and leaves found in stencil patterns used for kimono dyeing. These works embody an aesthetic that refuses to fix a subject within a definitive outline, instead allowing it to shift continually through light, atmosphere, and distance.

What IM MEN translated into clothing was not the form of bamboo itself, but the mysterious aura and quiet elegance surrounding it.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Carlo Scarpato (GoRunway)


The venue was transformed into an imagined landscape composed of black bamboo and shadows. Behind translucent screens, blurred figures moved through the space, gradually coming into focus as they approached. Created by the MDS design team in collaboration with graphic designer Rikako Nagashima, the environment functioned not as a backdrop for viewing clothes, but as a device through which visitors could physically experience the collection’s philosophy.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Carlo Scarpato (GoRunway)

As people moved through the installation wearing the garments, shadows and bodies, bamboo and human silhouettes continually overlapped and separated. Even the boundary between what was tangible and what was merely projected became increasingly ambiguous.

Embedding Shadow Into Material Rather Than Decorating the Surface

One of the season’s defining series, BAMBOO SHADOWS, features patterns developed by Rikako Nagashima based on the shadows of bamboo.

Printed onto fabric woven from bamboo fiber and organic cotton, the designs employ the Japanese dyeing technique ironaki, which allows pigments and dyes to subtly bleed and blur. The result evokes the elusive outlines of bamboo shadows drifting beyond clear focus.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)

A coat featuring a double front and oversized dolman sleeves wraps the entire body in bamboo-shadow imagery when its hood—extending seamlessly from the peak lapel—is worn. Here, the pattern is not a graphic placed upon the garment. It behaves like a shadow itself, stretching, overlapping, and shifting with movement.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)

In contrast, BLOOM NYLON employs high-density nylon with a papery texture, over which dyes are poured to create vibrant hues reminiscent of bamboo leaves and flower petals. Layered collars draw inspiration from the jūnihitoe robes worn by Princess Kaguya in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. The resulting silhouettes envelop the body with generous volume, creating the sensation of wearing color itself.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


From the restrained tonalities of ink painting to colors alive with the energy of blossoms and new growth, IM MEN allows multiple emotions and temporalities associated with bamboo to coexist within a single collection.

Transforming Bamboo Structure Into Garment Structure

BAMBOO BLEACH is a denim series individually processed by artisans through hand-applied discharge techniques.

By intentionally preserving the base color along seams and structural lines, the garments achieve delicate gradations reminiscent of bamboo depicted in ink paintings. Finer yarns than those typically used in denim create a surprisingly light texture despite their visual density.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


Meanwhile, BASKET JACQUARD translates the structure of traditional bamboo basket weaving into a dimensional textile through jacquard construction. A blouson formed from a single rectangular piece of fabric with minimal cuts creates both body and sleeves, while voluminous trousers taper toward the hem using the same principle. Piping along the edges references the finishing techniques used in bamboo craftsmanship.

What matters here is not the recreation of traditional bamboo objects.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


Rather, IM MEN studies the logic of bamboo itself: how it is woven, how nodes create strength, and how split strips intersect to form planes and volumes. These principles are reinterpreted as garment structures and pattern-making systems.

The Rhythm of Bamboo Written Into Pleats

The morphology and growth rhythm of bamboo also emerge through pleating.

BAMBOO PLEATS is a hand-pleated series created through repeated valley folds, evoking rows of standing bamboo. The fabric maintains a sculptural silhouette while opening and closing gently with movement.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


NODE PLEATS focuses on bamboo nodes—the intervals that punctuate growth while providing structural resilience. Their natural rhythm and contours are translated into hand-crafted pleats.

Rather than printing bamboo onto fabric, IM MEN turns the very mechanisms by which bamboo stands, bends, and grows into clothing. The result reflects the brand’s ongoing commitment to reexamining the relationship between material and body while inheriting Issey Miyake’s philosophy of “a piece of cloth.”

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


In BAMBOO SHEATH, hand-drawn interpretations of bamboo shoot skins become abstract lines expressing texture, luster, and vitality. Their layered structure appears in trouser draping that wraps around the body.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)


Meanwhile, VOID COTTON generates new silhouettes from absence. By removing pockets and leaving voids, glimpses of the body or underlying garments emerge, creating unexpected layers. Here too, what is absent becomes as significant as what remains.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Filippo Fior (GoRunway)

Veiling Structure Like a Shadow

At ground level, the collection introduced SORTIE VEILED, the second model from ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT, developed jointly by MDS and ASICS.

ISSEY MIYAKE FOOT is a footwear project that studies the human foot while proposing new perspectives on everyday movement. SORTIE VEILED made its debut within the IM MEN Spring/Summer 2027 presentation.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Salvatore Dragone (GoRunway)

The concept centers on concealing essential structural elements of a shoe beneath a single textile “veil.” Reinforcement components that would normally be cut, stitched, and visibly assembled are integrated into one continuous layer. Function is not hidden entirely; rather, it quietly reveals itself from within the fabric.

This idea resonates strongly with the collection’s broader exploration of the threshold between presence and absence.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Salvatore Dragone (GoRunway)

Things that are unseen yet undeniably present. Elements that remain invisible while supporting an entire form. Shadows, voids, and concealed structures shape both the garments and the footwear.

Based on ASICS’s pioneering SORTIE marathon shoes from the 1980s, the design inherits the spirit of innovation associated with performance running while reinterpreting it through a monochromatic palette that extends beyond a purely athletic context.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Salvatore Dragone (GoRunway)

Maintaining the comfort and mobility expected of a sneaker while blending naturally into everyday wardrobes, SORTIE VEILED is scheduled for release in Spring 2027 in three colorways: Tender Yellow/Sand Taupe, Cedar Brown/Maroon, and Black/Graphite.

When Contours Begin to Blur, Clothing Becomes Presence

In Praise of Bamboo Shadows is not a collection about bamboo.

It is about mist drifting through ink paintings. Overlapping leaves and branches emerging from stencil patterns. The structures of bamboo craft. Bamboo shoot skins. Rhythms created by nodes. And shadows that continuously change with the shifting light.

© ISSEY MIYAKE INC. / Photography: Carlo Scarpato (GoRunway)


IM MEN interprets these forms, techniques, and memories surrounding bamboo through materials, dyeing, weaving, pleating, pattern-making, spatial design, and footwear. What emerges is not design that declares its subject directly, but expression that only takes shape through the viewer’s perception.

Clothing and body. Figure and ground. Light and shadow. Presence and absence.

When these boundaries begin to blur, clothing ceases to be merely an object. It becomes a presence—something that quietly signals that someone is there.

IM MEN’s proposal for Spring/Summer 2027 is not a wardrobe built from references to Japanese culture. It is a reconsideration of a sensibility that has long found beauty within shadow, ambiguity, and empty space—and a translation of that sensibility into contemporary clothing.