Issey Miyake

Fashion designer

• Born: April 22, 1938
• Place of Birth: Hiroshima, Japan
• Died: August 5, 2022
• Place of Death: Tokyo, Japan

Education: Tama Art University

Significance: Issey Miyake was a Japanese fashion designer. He was best known for using technological advances to create his designs. Miyake had multiple fashion lines that included fragrances and accessories.

Background

Issey Miyake was born in 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan. He was a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II on August 6, 1945. Miyake was seven years old; his mother died three years later due to radiation exposure from the bomb.

Miyake wanted to play sports professionally but gravitated toward a career in fashion design. In 1965, he graduated, with a degree in graphic design, from the Tama Art University in Tokyo. He then moved to Paris to study fashion at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. There he learned how to make clothing. He completed an apprenticeship with fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy. While he was in Paris, Miyake witnessed the 1968 student protests and decided that he did not want to design clothing for wealthy women. He wanted to create fashion that was accessible to everyone. He wanted to work on long-lasting pieces that were machine washable and made from eco-friendly materials.

Miyake moved to New York City, where he worked with designers Guy Laroche and Geoffrey Beene. In 1970, Miyake opened the Miyake Design Studio in New York. He showed his first collection the following year in the city and in Paris in 1972. His pieces balked traditional clothing-making approaches, using a one-piece-of-cloth method instead. The designer played with materials such as paper, plastic, rope, and woven grass that pleated, crinkled, and draped yet held their shape. He was a fan of layered and draped looks.

Life’s Work

Miyake began to collaborate with various designers. One of his 1970 designs featured a jersey printed with pictures of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin; Makiko Minagawa helped to create the print. Miyake’s designs became popular internationally, and he opened a Tokyo store in 1974. Miyake launched his first menswear collection four years later.

In 1986, Miyake began collaborating with American photographer Irving Penn. They worked together for more than a decade on Miyake’s advertising campaigns. Penn produced hundreds of photos of the designer’s work throughout the years. Miyake’s first Paris store opened in 1990. He then designed the Lithuanian team’s Olympic uniforms for the Barcelona games in 1992. In addition, he developed a line of fragrances.

Miyake launched his famed Pleats Please collection in 1993. The items were made from a polyester jersey material that held pleats without losing form despite how the wearer moved. The collection was a huge hit with both men and women looking for easy wearable pieces that barely wrinkled or creased.

By 1994, the designer had become overwhelmed with work, so he decided to hand over his men’s fashions to his assistant, Naoki Takizawa. While Miyake continued to oversee the designs, he now had time to work on other projects. In addition to clothing design, Miyake became a technological innovator, developing ways to use technology to create designs. In 1998, he and his assistant/textile engineer, Dai Fujiwara, created A-Poc, which stood for "A Piece of Cloth," a tube of customizable fabric cutouts that the wearer used to design pieces. The fabric was made from a single thread woven by a machine that was programmed by a computer. The machine eliminated the need for additional cutting and sewing, saving on the cost of labor.

In 1999, Miyake put Takizawa in charge of his ready-to-wear women’s wear collection. He continued to focus on new collections and collaborations, including the development of HaaT, a women’s clothing label by Minagawa, with whom Miyake worked on his first designs in 1970. New collections included the launch of Cauliflower, a one-size-fits-all T-shirt line, in 2001, and Issey Miyake Fête, a colorful women’s collection, in 2004.

In 2007, Fujiwara took over the ready-to-wear collections from Takizawa, and Miyake played an integral role in the opening of the Japanese design museum 21‗21 Design Sight in Tokyo. The same year, the designer opened his Reality Lab in Tokyo, where teams of designers and engineers use technology to develop clothing pieces that are eco-friendly. Miyake launched Issey Miyake 132 5, a collection made from recycled materials, in 2010. Around this time, he worked on an accessories line that included watches.

Fujiwara stepped down from running Miyake’s ready-to-wear lines, and Yoshiyuki Miyamae replaced him in 2011. Miyake, who mostly remained out of the public eye, resurfaced in 2016 for two exhibits of his work. The first was the Miyake Issey Exhibition: The Work of Issey Miyake at the National Art Center, Tokyo, and the second was Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Impact

Miyake was a fashion designer who has spent more than four decades creating pieces that are sustainable and wearable. The designer believed that clothing should serve a purpose other than fashion. He developed ways to use technology to create designs that are light, practical, and washable. Miyake continues to focus on using technology and sustainable materials in an effort to protect the environment. In a 2016 interview, the designer said he planned to incorporate more paper into his future designs.

Personal Life

Miyake kept much about his life private. For many years, Miyake did not talk about his experience surviving the Hiroshima bombing. The blast killed many members of his family, including his mother. It left the designer with a bone marrow disease, which caused him to walk with a limp as an adult. In 2009, he opened up about the experience, writing a piece in the New York Times, in which he urged American president Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima for the anniversary of the atomic bombing. Obama eventually visited Hiroshima in May 2016 to focus on talks about nuclear weapons.

Miyake died of liver cancer on August 5, 2022, in Tokyo. He was eighty-four.

Bibliography

Blanchard, Tamsin. "Issey Miyake: 45 Years at the Forefront of Fashion." Guardian, 10 Apr. 2016, www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/apr/10/issey-miyake-45-years-at-the-forefront-of-fashion. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.

"The Concepts and Work of Issey Miyake." Miyake Design Studio, mds.isseymiyake.com/im/en/. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.

Labott, Elise. "Here’s Why Obama Decided to Go to Hiroshima." CNN , 26 May 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/politics/hiroshima-obama-visit-why-he-made-the-decision/index.html.. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.

Louie, Elaine, and Elizabeth Paton. “Issey Miyake, Who Opened a Door for Japanese Fashion, Dies at 84." The New York Times, 11 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/fashion/issey-miyake-dead.html. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.