Issey Miyake has set the opening date for its new Pleats Please flagship.
On Dec. 12, the company will open a flagship at 14 Kenmare Street in New York’s NoLIta. The 2,224-square-foot space on the corner of Elizabeth and Kenmare Streets is on the ground floor of architect Tadao Ando’s first building in New York and his first residential building outside Asia.
The store is being designed by the Japanese firm Moment and will also feature 60 feet of frontage on Kenmare Street. The design concept focuses on a series of sharp lines running through the modern, industrial space. There are concrete floors and walls, lighting rails that are embedded in steel plates that extend overhead and paneled walls made of white molded resin that are intended to reference the pleats that characterize the brand and its pleating process.
To celebrate the opening, a new selection of pleated tops, skirts and dresses called Soil & Leaf will be available exclusively at this location.
This store will join another Pleats Please unit at 126 Prince Street in SoHo, which will undergo renovations in early 2025. These are the only Pleats Please stores in the U.S. although there are others in Toyko, Paris and throughout Asia. The brand is also carried at the Issey Miyake flagships in Toyko, Paris, London, Milan, Zurich, Osaka and Kobe. There is also an Issey Miyake flagship at 119 Hudson Street in TriBeCa.
Issey Miyake introduced Pleats Please in 1993 and it soon became one of the designer’s most successful enterprises due to its easy shapes, innovative prints and suitability for travel.
The late designer started to experiment with pleating in the late 1980s after an exhibition of his work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. As he recalled in the book “Pleats Please Issey Miyake,” “After the exhibition, I became convinced that I had already accomplished everything that I could. And so I began to think about a new journey upon which to embark.”
That journey led him to home in on pleats. As he told WWD in a 2007 interview: “In 1988, I started working with pleats, and I wanted them to hold their shape and be easy to care for and to be washable.”
Today, the collection includes everything from shirts and sweaters to dresses and jumpsuits in solids and patterns for women as well as a collection called Homme Plissé for men that is also centered around pleats.