Walked into one of the Issey Miyake shops on Omotesando yesterday afternoon and walked out with a piece of origami. The 1325 Collection is kind of boggling, because all the skirts and pants etc. fold down to beautiful flat pieces of geometry. The summer offerings are all made of precisely folded gray and black and white fabric, with metallic ink screened on when each piece is folded down flat. When they’re worn, though, what looks like a big swath of bling turns out to be little points of sparkle tucked randomly into corners.
As an added bonus, the whole collection is made from recycled plastic bottles.
Stateside, the 1325 Collection is sold at the Tribeca Issey Miyake store in New York (119 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10013, Tel. 212.226.0100)
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The Last Tea Bowl Thief was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
Only In Japan 
I wish I had a genius that involved fabric and sewing. This beats the origami I did as a child. ~:-)
Absolutely fantastic design on that dress. But do you have a pair of origami earrings to go with it? (Haha, ok this may be a shameless plug, but seriously, custom origami earrings is something we already do!)
-Kyle (SCJC origami guy)
I see from your blog that you’re an origami/math guy, a combination I’ve discovered since posting that picture. I’ve known for a long time about the connection between math ability and musical ability, but this connection to folded paper (or I guess you could call it folded planes) is new and interesting to me. Am wondering, do people who are gifted at origami excel in a different area of mathematics than people who are gifted at music?
Well, origami is most associated with geometry, along with other fields that involve stuff folding up: like robotic arm motion and protein folding. One of the more famous origami designers actually helped to make a giant fold-up lens for a space telescope!:
http://www.langorigami.com/science/eyeglass/eyeglass.php4
Music generally deals more with ratios and oscillations (sound). Pythagoras felt that geometry and ratios went hand-in-hand, though most modern math describing sound waves is very heavy on equations. So, if I were to guess, origami/math people would almost always be very good at geometry, whereas music/math people would probably be more of a mix between people good with geometry and people good with equations.
Now, some recent work on music has revealed that there is quite a bit of geometry hidden in music! So who knows, maybe in the future more music/math people will be very good with geometry:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417142454.htm
You look stellar Jonelle! So lovely 🙂
Haha, it’s all the skirt!
@Kyle, thanks for the pointers and commentary! That last piece about representing music as geometric forms was especially interesting to me because although I enjoy music a lot, the structure my musically adept friends can hear as plain as day has always eluded me.
Short post, but it means a lot to me. I hate the long-words post with clear topice. I love your post. Good job.