Among the most talked-about setups during Milan Style Week was The Paper Log: Shell and Core, a task led by Satoshi Kondo of Miyake Style Studio in cooperation with Spanish architecture workplace Ensamble Studio. It took control of Issey Miyake’s through Bagutta store with home furnishings crafted from compressed paper– made to look like marble and other, lighter, products. 
< img src =" https://design-milk.com/images/2026/04/Issey-Mikaye-14-800x1226.jpg "alt= "Clothing shop interior with vibrant garments on racks, a textured ceiling installation, and people browsing near a fabric-covered display table."width ="800"height="1226"/ >
The concept stems from the pleated couture that Issey Miyake is understood for. To make his origami-like clothes, a compressed roll of wafer-thin paper sheets safeguard the fabric as it is fed through the pleating maker.”The name Paper Log originates from the roll’s structural resemblance to a tree trunk, with its circular marbling resembling growth rings– an idea of the death of time in both a plant’s life and the pleating procedure,”the brand name explains. After being fed through the maker, the rolls are likewise used to quickly carry the pleated pieces. Across the display room, the initial motivation and point of departure– the compressed paper roll– was provided brand-new life in different guises. Ensamble Studio crafted ethereal pieces that appeared like a cross in between clothes and sculpture by peeling sheets from the Paper Log, then treating them with solidifying agents. The in-house team, on the other hand, devised models of furnishings, such as a marble-like block that served as a screen table and was complemented by a Corbusier-like armchair; and long, log-like benches that exposed their knotty ends, as if the paper log were directing its previous, tree-like state. They achieved these marvels by soaking the paper in wax, painting it with glue, or connecting it into bundles.
This isn’t the very first time that Satoshi Kondo has actually been inspired by this easily versatile by-product of fashion. He produced seating and other setup elements for the ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer season 2025 program in Paris by cutting the paper log crosswise. For the Milan store, he and Ensamble expanded on these initial concepts to provide the product’s innovative possibilities– which hover in between the ephemeral and the concrete, the delicate and the robust– the most elegant of analyses.
Photography editor’s own.< img src="https://design-milk.com/images/2026/02/Elizabeth-Pagliacolo-headshot-100x100.png" width="100" height="100" alt =""/ > Elizabeth Pagliacolo is the Editor of Azure magazine and Managing editor of Design Milk. Based in Toronto, she covers design at every scale, from the spoon to the city. A few of her preferred things, in no specific order, are Mulholland Drive (the motion picture and the location), scorched Basque cheesecake (ideally from Toronto’s Bar Raval), true criminal activity podcasts (indiscriminately) and the noise of boots crunching down on fall leaves.