There’s a strange magic that happens when fashion designers walk away from the catwalk. When they abandon the commercial machinery of retail and seasons, and instead immerse themselves in the ephemeral world of live performance. Satoshi Kondo, its chief designer Issey Miyake women’s collection, just proved why fashion thrives on a stage.
For Némo Flouret’s modern dance piece Last LightsKondo designed costumes for all eleven performers in a collaboration that combines expressive clothing with choreography and set design. The result is a study of how clothing can become architecture, movement and storytelling all at once. Since its premiere at the 79th Festival d’Avignon in July 2025, the piece has toured internationally, with recent performances at Grand Palace in Paris from June 12 to 14.
Shared creative language
Kondo’s connection to Flouret runs deep. He has collaborated with the dancer and choreographer in two previous ones Issey Miyake women’s shows in Paris: Spring Summer 2024 and Autumn Winter 2025/26. Each time, Flouret’s rigorously researched physicality rendered in a poetry of synchronized and desynchronized movement elevated the conventional catwalk into something closer to a ritual.
“There is this sense of physicality, something sensual, that I find evident in Flouret’s work,Kondo thought.I see this project as an embodiment of our shared creativity, where I was able to immerse myself in the world that Flouret created for Derniers Feux. Through a joyful journey of discussion and exploration, I found a way to understand and interpret the narrative in layman’s terms.“
What draws Satoshi Kondo to Flouret’s work is immediately apparent in every description of his process. Flouret’s preoccupation with the human body, his approach to performance, his ability to evoke sensuality through movement, these are not foreign languages for a designer whose entire practice is centered on understanding how fabric and form interact with the body in motion. This shared creative synergy between disciplines was the inevitable meeting point.
“There is this sense of physicality, something sensual, that I find evident in Flouret’s work,Kondo thought.I see this project as an embodiment of our shared creativity, where I was able to immerse myself in the world that Flouret created for Derniers Feux. Through a joyful journey of discussion and exploration, I found a way to understand and interpret the narrative in layman’s terms.“
Costumes as living set design
Based on the technologies and craftsmanship developed for the Issey Miyake women’s collection, Kondo created original suits that feature a mix of textures and versatile styles in a vibrant color palette. These are not passive garments that adorn bodies. They evolve alongside the dynamic evolution of the choreography, functioning as supports, as architecture, as extensions of Flouret’s visual language.
“The absolute aliveness I felt Last Lightsthe choreography, the set design, the fireworks, and of course the performers themselves, were the source of my inspiration,” said Kondo. “In designing and making the costumes, my hope was to create something that complemented, if not elevated, the experience of Last Lights.”
What Last Lights Actually it is
Last Lights it is a reverie about the ephemeral and the intangible. Surrounded by a community of dancers and musicians, Flouret invents a show in the present, a world of reconstruction that combines childhood and collective memory. The piece addresses fear and emotion through the lens of a final fireworks display, with its performers moving in perpetual motion where dance itself becomes a way of being. They are at once technicians, performers and spectators, connecting images that appear and disappear, bringing dreams and nightmares to life with a thrilling energy that transforms each moment as if it were, infinitely, the last.
The piece continues its tour schedule, with upcoming shows Charleroi, Belgium on 18 and 19 September 2026.
Issey Miyake Fall Winter 2026
Satoshi Kondo’s work on Last Lights is a natural extension of his design philosophy for Issey Miyake. THE Fall Winter 2026 Collection continues the exploration of corporeality, textile innovation and the relationship between body and garment. In Kondo’s hands, Issey Miyake remains a practice based on rigor, artistry and the uncompromising belief that fashion at its highest expression is about understanding how people move through space.
Discover more of the Derniers Feux show and Satoshi Kondo’s costumes for it in our gallery:
This is when designers are given permission to create beyond the commercial calendar. The result is not only beautiful clothes or impressive choreography. It is proof that fashion’s truest stage has always been wherever it celebrates the human body in all its complexity and movement.
