The Brooklyn preschool uniforms mistaken for Issey Miyake

The teachers at Ms Lam Montessori do not wear Issey Miyake to work.

Their pleated dresses in raspberry, cobalt and apple green are uniforms by Japanese designer Yamasaki Takashi. The head of school, Stephanie Woo, confirmed the maker in emailed answers from Taiwan, The Guardian reported on 14 October 2026.

Ms Lam Montessori is a Mandarin immersion preschool chain, a school that teaches largely in Mandarin, originally founded in Taipei, Taiwan. It runs 14 branches in Taiwan and five in Brooklyn, New York, and works with children aged one to six. Montessori here means a child-led method of education built around hands-on activity.

The mix-up lasted years. It broke into the open after a comment on a Williamsburg subreddit, a local online forum, asked why staff seemed to wear Issey Miyake every day. Photos from the school's website show the uniforms in plisse, a cloth treated to hold narrow folds. Screen grabs of those photos were viewed 3.5 million times on X.

They are not what they seemed. Pleats Please, the line of permanent pleated clothing from Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion house founded in Tokyo in 1970, launched in 1993. Woo said the Yamasaki Takashi dresses cost about one-tenth of the $700 price of a Pleats Please dress. They are worn at all of the chain's locations.

Staff in Taiwan have worn the uniform for 12 years. Staff in Brooklyn have worn it for eight years. The idea came from Woo's mother, the original Ms Lam, described on the company website as the first person to bring Montessori to Taiwan.

One Brooklyn site at the centre of the online talk sits on Berry Street in Williamsburg, at North 8th Street, The Cut reported. The school also shares classroom photographs on its official Instagram account as @ms.lam_montessori, which identifies as Mandarin Immersion Brooklyn. The coverage kept circling the same question. The Cut asked if all these teachers were wearing Issey Miyake.

Woo does own Issey Miyake. She said she owns a couple of pieces that she wears for special events at the school. When she spoke to Vogue over Zoom, she wore a tightly pleated salmon button-up shirt, Vogue reported.

What makes this stand out is the colour. Preschool staff dress is often dark and washable. Here it is bright, matched and deliberately chosen. Woo said children are naturally drawn to beauty, and the uniform was picked with that in mind.