Issey Miyake shows sculptural looks at Paris Fashion Week in nod to late designer

PARIS, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Issey Miyake designer Satoshi Kondo showed a collection of light, sculptured silhouettes built from technical fabrics, nudging the label’s signature approach forward with looks that varied from futuristic to romantic at Paris Fashion Week on Friday.

The first show since the death of its namesake founder, the presentation began with a projection of Miyake's portrait on a screens around the room.

Miyake, who died in August at age 84, was known for developing a new way of pleating fabrics – making garments that held their shape but allowed freedom of movement.

Over the years, the label has been known to demonstrate the ease of its often seamless garments by presenting them in movement, on dancers.

There were dancers in Friday’s catwalk show, in dresses with intricate pleatwork that looked like delicate knitwear from a distance, marking a softer contrast with sharper looks, that were punctuated with spikes.

At the end of the show, a pack of models in peach-toned garments broke into a run, leaping into the air, and the audience erupted into claps and cheers.

“The finale performance is an expression of the way I see how people can be connected regardless of their gender, skin tone. They should all be together,” Kondo told Reuters, speaking through a translator.

“Every collection I created is always a reflection of what I learned and what my team had learned from Issey-san,” he added. (Reporting by Mimosa Spencer and Ardee Napolitano; editing by Jonathan Oatis)