Board masters

Afternoon sun filters across a workshop in Kyoto as artisan Mamoru Nohara tugs on a roll of white linen thread before winding it around two cedar boards. The fluidity of his movements reflects the four decades he has spent perfecting the art of itajime, a traditional Japanese resist-dyeing technique that involves wood being fastened around textiles to create geometric motifs.

While artisans have long applied this dyeing style to kimonos, Nohara is today making something different – an abstractly asymmetrical two-tone top with spiralling panels of colour, to feature in the new collection of Issey Miyake brand 132 5.

Miyake has long been a master of fusing