I baked my Issey Miyake

Pastry chef and writer Tanya Bush buys her Issey Miyake and eats it too.

Every once in a while you stumble across an article of clothing so obviously and disgustingly you, and so ruinously expensive, that it induces a vague physical dread just to think about buying it.

In 2022 I encountered one of these garments in an appointment-only vintage shop in Paris: An Issey Miyake Pleats Please top with a recipe for cherry buns on it. Fashion loves food, but I’ve never been one to be seduced by a Loewe Tomato Clutch or a Dolce and Gabbana dress covered in rigatoni. This wasn’t for the lay-foodie, this was for a PASTRY CHEF, for someone who might actually stop what they were doing and bake the cake, for the founder of an obscure literary magazine with cake in the name. The man presiding over my visit (who seemed acutely aware that everything in the room exceeded my checking account balance) informed me that it once had a sister, a matching pleated skirt. Both came from an early aughts Issey Miyake collection dedicated to repurposed culinary ephemera. I took to the internet to investigate. There were other pastries, namely a “Farmhouse Cake,” rendered in glorious guava pink with a cherry-red type. I surrendered to the obsession, trawling eBay, and messaging sellers on obscure Japanese vintage sites with search terms like ““Recipe Print Please” and “レシピのプリーツを印刷してください” in increasingly desperate combinations.

All roads lead to Depop. In March of this year, a Google Alert notified me of a Pleats Please set advertised as “irresistible for bakers.” “Whimsy and pop!” The time was nigh. We haggled back and forth, offers ricocheting like gunfire, until I was $783.00 poorer and experiencing what I can only describe as post-nut clarity, a feeling that I tried to offset by justifying it as a gift for the recent release of a book.

The things you idolize have an unfortunate habit of disappointing you. Much the same way I thought I would transform into an actualized version of myself after publishing a narrative cookbook (lol), wearing the set made me feel frumpy and exposed: The cut was vaguely unflattering, the color unforgiving for my rosacea-addled skin. It felt like cosplay. The clothes that I’d actually become myself in were grease-stained Agnes B jeans from long shifts and camo Crocs. I was devastated, then incensed. This was my punishment for dressing like the person I aspired to be. No returns on Depop! Then I realized there was only one reasonable thing to do: Bake the Cake. The recipe, however, presented a problem. The pleats had swallowed most of the instructions. Entire verbs had succumbed to the folds. There was self-raising flour, something that appeared to say “add mousse” (?) a “quick oven,” (mystifying) and “glacé cherries,” all of it oozing post-War British housewife.

What I like about baking is that most people think it’s precise, when, in reality, you can usually throw shit together and it will work out just fine (dressing, I realized, might actually be the same way). If there was ever a sound test of the theory, it would be this illegible recipe. I was going to a dinner anyway, and I was expected to bring dessert. I tried to write down a vague set of instructions from the garment. Then I procured maraschino cherries, my closest approximation, and brought them into work. I whisked olive oil and melted butter together because I didn’t have the patience for creaming, then threw in some sugar and self rising flour, “a little bit of milk just enough to make the mixture wet enough.” I didn’t have high hopes when I ferried it into the “quick oven,” but the cake turned out delicious, plush with an added syrupy sweetness from the cherries. The recipe, it turns out, was more satisfying than the garment it was written on.

---

• 2 cupfuls self-raising flour

• 3 oz. butter (I used half melted butter, half olive oil)

• 4 eggs

• 1 teaspoonful baking powder

• 2½ cupfuls brown sugar

• 1 oz. glacé cherries

• ... ground cinnamon (vibe it out diva!)

• ... nutmeg (skipped)

• …a little milk (“just enough to make mixture wet enough”)

Preheat the oven to a “moderate” temperature. Whisk the butter and olive oil together with the brown sugar. Add a dash of vanilla if you have it, then the eggs. Toss in the self-raising flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt, then fold in a bit of milk until your batter is the right texture…you’ll figure it out! Top with the cherries and bake until it looks like a farmhouse cake.