A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE has never been content with simply putting art on clothing. For its latest collaboration, the brand has partnered with Brooklyn-based contemporary artist Tomokazu Matsuyama on the TYPE-XII Project, a collection that treats fabric as the primary medium for translating painting into something wearable. The result is not a print-on-garment exercise. It is a genuine dialogue between two creative processes.
The collection comprises seven coats and seven T-shirts, each developed through A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE's distinctive material technique. Rather than starting with a pattern and applying surface decoration, the process begins at the textile stage. Matsuyama's paintings are interpreted onto cloth first, with brushwork, layered composition, and pictorial elements woven into the fabric before the garment itself takes shape.
Two source paintings anchor the development. "By And By Daylight" (2023), a large-scale acrylic on canvas at 120 by 100 inches, and "The True Oasis Erase" (2025), a mixed-media piece combining ink, acrylic, collagraph, relief, engraving, jigsaw, pochoir, and collage with hand finishing. The second work's complexity, layering multiple print and hand techniques within a single composition, gives A-POC ABLE particularly dense source material to reinterpret across cloth.
The coats operate on two compositional strategies. Some draw from a single painting, preserving the full pictorial field across the entire garment surface. Others combine elements from multiple works, creating hybrid compositions that establish new visual relationships between paintings that were never originally in conversation. This second approach essentially uses the coat as a curatorial framework, remixing Matsuyama's catalogue into arrangements that only exist in wearable form.
Alongside the garments, the project includes three sculptures produced using specialised 3D-printing technology developed for A-POC ABLE's own mannequins. These sculptures will be on view for a limited window at the start of the exhibition, with a dynamic textile installation printed with imagery from Matsuyama's artistic universe framing the entire presentation.
The TYPE-XII collection is available now at A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE / KYOTO and ISSEY MIYAKE MARUNOUCHI, with global expansion to ISSEY MIYAKE / PARIS, ISSEY MIYAKE / NEW YORK, and ISSEY MIYAKE / MILAN from July 8. The concurrent exhibition opens July 9 at ISSEY MIYAKE / NEW YORK and its adjoining MADO gallery space at 45 Madison Avenue, running through August 31.