No brand is quite as smart at reinventing itself as Issey Miyake, who unveiled the latest chapter in its design history in Paris on Thursday – IM Men.

Staged in the 16th-century hospital Couvent des Cordeliers, the collection was entitled “To Wear A Piece of Cloth” and based on the idea that a piece of fabric holds immeasurable depth.
 
The cast marching around the space before two huge robots twisting and turning large black panels, to mimic the motion of the clothes.

Created by a new design trio of Yuki Itakura, Sen Kawahara and Nobutaka Kobayashi, the volumes and inventive materials were all very in synch with the aesthetics of the house’s late great founder Issey Miyake.
 
By far Japan’s best-known designer, in part because of a series of Suntory Whisky TV clips and ads that covered scores of billboards in Tokyo, Miyake always imparted a sense of grace to his clothes.
 
As did this collection, which opened with fashionable nomads, huge swathes and folds of cotton – elephantine dhotis, giant capes, exaggerated cowls, Jesuitical sleeves. In ecru, putty, and Jedi pale gray at first.

Mixed in wrapped up padded waistcoats, trenches cut with eight-inch-wide lapels, or urbanistic soutanes. The net assemblages should have been overpowering, but the trio are such smart cutters the clothes instead had great presence. 

 
Then changing gears to the coolest of modern office gear – minimalist jerkins in treated cottons, or the softest suede baseball jackets over completely unadorned sweatpants and tops.
 
Before going all out with rhomboid zig zag pants with matching cocoon shearling jackets, finished with a white silk hunting stock.
 
Breaking new ground with a broken waffle weave tunics, leggings and boots. Totally perfect for your next cocktail party on desert planet Tatooine. And climaxing with a dozen characters in multi-functional cotton garb – for the Jedi  after party; who unbuttoned jackets into large fabrics squares, and held them above their heads. Creating a nice draught as they ran around the catwalk.
 
Symbolically breathing fresh air into a Japanese institution that seems very much alive and well today.