Let s assume the World Cup is behind fashion s current fascination with all things athletic, because it s clearly a global phenomenon. Naoki Takizawa weighed in with a Japanese take in his last collection as the creative director of Issey Miyake, but he adopted a very genteel stance, claiming inspiration from the green of playing fields and the white of chalk lines, tokens to him of an era before ESPN and multimillion-dollar contracts. His chosen color scheme played out in the green detailing on saddle shoes, the green top-stitching on a white jacket, and the chalky white of a pair of tracksuit-styled leather pants.
Inspired perhaps by the numbers on a scoreboard, he blew up the numerals on his coats and jackets until they had an almost abstract graphic quality (witness the huge "7" on a car coat). And it wouldn t be a Miyake collection if there weren t some tricky fabrics. Here, shiny suit linings were used for a pajamalike two-piece, Japanese paper was hand-knit into an artisanal top, and a white suit had been hand-painted (in green, of course) with a floral motif and then washed, making the dye bleed quite intriguingly. Takizawa now advances to the majors in his own right. His replacement comes from the Miyake design studio s farm team.
