ISSEY MIYAKE AUTUMN/WINTER 2015-16 READY-TO-WEAR PARIS FASHION WEEK

The sheer joy that usually infects an Issey Miyake collection was tempered in the January men’s show. The clothes were elegant, true, but they were darker, more subdued than usual. The women’s outing today was called Colorscope, and that title was enough to suggest a full-on Miyakefest of vibrancy. But the restraint exercised by creative director Yoshiyuki Miyamae harked right back to January. The opening section of primary-toned separates—yellow, green, blue, purple, red—concentrated those hues inside a textured black fabric, almost like a honeycomb, so the color itself was shadowed into suggestion. The effect was beautiful, like the drape and wrap of the clothes themselves, but it was melancholic.

That same low-key mood attached itself to a group of classic pleated Miyake pieces, springy from the Steam Stretch technique, but shaded in tones of earth and forest. Again, beautiful, but slightly mournful. A final group featured outfits in 3-D star patterns inspired by snow crystals. It sealed this collection as one in which remarkable technique had been turned inward, to somewhere pensive and questioning.

But with the finale, it was almost as though Miyamae-san wanted to reverse everything that had come before. The models emerged in darkness with an obi-like situation at their waists. When they untied it, a full scarf-hemmed skirt was released. Then they whirled like dervishes. Sheer magic.