During Milan Design Week, Issey Miyake and Ensamble Studio transformed pleating leftovers into seating and objects—an elegant rethink of waste, craft, and durability.
When people talk about fashion design. they often picture the romance of “making”—the human hand. the artisan story. the promise of effort visible in every seam.. Issey Miyake’s latest detour through design makes a different case: sometimes the most interesting craft happens after the machine has already done its work.
The focus is “Paper Log: Shell and Core. ” a project presented during Milan Design Week (April 21–May 5) that grew out of Issey Miyake’s signature pleating logic.. In Miyake’s system, pleats are not framed as a slow, narrative-by-hand process.. Clothes are cut and sewn oversized. pressed in moulds with heat and pressure so the folds set into the polyester. and the production byproducts follow a separate route: sheets used for separation and protection end up on waste piles. waiting to be recycled.
A new thread enters when Satoshi Kondo visits the manufacturer and starts treating those material leftovers not as an end point. but as an invitation.. In the orbit of his experiment. paper becomes more than packaging or an operational necessity—it becomes a raw substrate with structure. texture. and presence.. That shift matters because it changes the emotional equation of waste: what was meant to be temporary is given the chance to become permanent enough to be lived with.
Misryoum sees “Paper Log” as part of a broader cultural turn: the design world is increasingly suspicious of solutions that simply “rebrand” discarded materials.. The more compelling direction is systems-thinking—where waste streams are not only reduced but also re-encoded into objects with a clear aesthetic and functional life.. In other words, sustainability isn’t an add-on; it’s the premise.
The “Paper Log” objects—an 80 cm high. 40 cm diameter roll—are built to look like tree trunks. complete with marbled circles that resemble growth rings.. The symbolism isn’t decorative fluff.. It’s a quiet metaphor linking time in nature to time in manufacturing: growth rings suggest years accumulating in wood. while the pleating process relies on heat and pressure to “record” form.. This is design that reads like a cross-section—literal and cultural—asking you to notice what’s usually buried.
Misryoum also appreciates how the project is structured as an argument with itself.. “Shell and Core” splits the experience into two opposing readings of the same idea: ephemeral versus concrete, delicate versus robust.. That tension is built into the making.. The sheets are removed from the logs and stiffened into objects where even imperfection is kept rather than sanded away.. Then. to make seating and furniture that can hold weight. the logs are worked with wax. glue. and binding until they become something materially confident.
The result—stools, chairs, and tables shaped from paper-derived forms—offers an unusually honest form of durability.. It’s not the “timelessness” of something that pretends nature never changes.. It’s sturdiness achieved through transformation, where the material’s origin remains visible in the surface logic.. Misryoum reads that as a cultural shift in how we treat materials: not as nameless components. but as traces of process.
In a city like Milan. where design often oscillates between gallery sculpture and consumer object. “Paper Log” lands in a space that feels more like wearable thinking than product certainty.. It borrows the grammar of pleats—folding, setting, freezing time—then translates it into furniture.. The seats and tables don’t just look crafted; they behave like outcomes of a system. the way Miyake’s clothes behave when pleats have been fixed by heat rather than hand shaping.
Perhaps the most meaningful afterlife here is not simply recycling.. It’s the decision to keep the marks of production rather than erase them.. Waste piles are usually treated as a clean break.. In this case, they become a starting point for objects that can host bodies, gatherings, and everyday use.. That is where the project turns from clever material play into cultural storytelling: an insistence that the future can be built from what industry already produces. if we’re willing to see it differently.
If Misryoum is right about the direction—sustainability as a design method rather than a marketing message—then “Paper Log” feels less like a one-off installation and more like a blueprint for how creative industries might evolve.. The question that lingers after Milan Design Week isn’t whether paper can be durable enough.. It’s whether more factories. studios. and brands will treat their byproducts as creative resources—waiting not for disposal. but for interpretation.
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