Issey Miyake, who has died aged 84, was less a couturier in the traditional sense of the term, more a designer of products that happened to be clothes.
Throughout his long career as a fashion designer Miyake explored the possibilities offered by new as well as traditional materials, and he later embraced computer technology in his quest to create clothing that was practical, comfortable, machine-washable, and that did not crease.
He was also keenly aware of the desire for a “greener” world, rejecting one of the cardinal principles of the traditional fashion industry: “It’s important to make clothes for long-term use now, not just one season,” he said. “We can’t keep throwing things away.” In 2010 he launched a new line made from recycled materials.
None of this is to say that his creations were dull. In the mid-nineties he came up with his famous Flying Saucer dress, in which the wearer resembled a colourful stack of paper lanterns.
This was followed by the Minaret dress, constructed from pleated polyester in shades of orange and green, and with a skirt framed by a series of hoops that caused the garment to sway with the wearer’s movements. As one observer put it: “Essentially, it is a kinetic sculpture that happens to be a dress.”
Indeed, to Miyake art was as important as the opportunities afforded by technology. In 1982 a gown he created from rattan vines was featured on the cover of Artforum magazine. "It was unheard of for a piece of clothing to be featured in an art magazine," he recalled.
In 1988 he was the first fashion designer to have a solo exhibit at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. And in 1995 he produced jackets and coats which, when the models spread their arms, opened up into rectangles and squares, giving them the look of abstract paintings.
But the overall goal remained, in his words, “making clothing that is worn by people in the real world”. Hence the use of polyester for garments that could be machine-washed, packed in a suitcase and later retrieved to look as pristine as when they were first stowed away.
Clothes, he believed, should not constrict movement of the body, and in this respect he took inspiration from the kimono worn in his native Japan. Miyake once said, however: “Many people repeat the past. I’m not interested. I prefer evolution.”
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Advertise with NZME.And his constant quest for innovation informed by traditional crafts led to his exploring the use of a bewildering variety of materials, among them paper, rubber, bamboo, plastic bottle tops, rattan, even egg cartons.
In the early nineties Miyake introduced his celebrated line Pleats Please, which featured his signature technique. Materials developed from a single thread had pleats added after the clothes had been sewn into shape. These garments are lightweight, crease-proof and easy to pack, and retain their rows of horizontal, vertical or knife-edge pleats.
With his colleague Dai Fujiwara, a textile engineer, he developed what they called A-POC (standing for “A Piece of Cloth”), using computer technology to create clothing knitted from a single thread without the need for the additional sewing or cutting customary in the world’s sweatshops.
What emerges from the process is a flattened tube of material that can be transformed into a shirt, skirt or pair of trousers if cut with a pair of scissors along an outline already woven into the fabric, allowing the client to choose features such as neck style, sleeve length, or length of garment. In other words, he or she can intervene in the design process. In 2005 one of these garments became the first piece of clothing in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Issey Miyake was born in Hiroshima on April 22 1938. He was seven when the Americans devastated the city with a five-tonne atomic bomb. His mother, a schoolteacher, was severely burned in the blast and died three years later as a result of radiation exposure.
WATCH: Issey Miyake fall 1994/1995
In an article for The New York Times in 2009, Miyake wrote: "When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape, I remember it all. I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put [these memories] behind me, preferring to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. I gravitated towards the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic."
As a teenager he aspired to be a painter, joining a local art club, but soon became fascinated by fashion, secretly copying illustrations from French fashion magazines to conceal his new interest from his father, an officer in the Japanese army.
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Advertise with NZME.In 1959 he went to Tama Art University in Tokyo to study graphic arts. In his spare time he began designing clothes, and in 1965 moved to Paris, where he trained at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. His first job was with Guy Laroche in Avenue Montaigne, but he resigned on becoming excited by the atmosphere of the 1968 student riots: “When the riots broke out, I witnessed first-hand the beginning of a new era: the era of the common man.”
The subsequent lack of a living wage persuaded him to join Hubert de Givenchy but, while Miyake admired European high culture, he was becoming increasingly disenchanted: “People were very snobbish in Paris,” he later said, “especially in haute couture.”
He moved to New York, where he briefly became an assistant to the American designer Geoffrey Beene before returning to Tokyo. There he set up as a freelance, designing costumes for the Japanese cosmetics firm Shiseido. In 1970 he and the textile designer Makiko Minagawa set up the Miyake Design Studio.
In the same year he showed a first, small, collection in New York. The editor-in-chief of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, gave him a page in the magazine, and Bloomingdale's agreed to sell some of his outfits.
In Japan, Miyake rapidly became a sensation. His first show there, held in a parking garage, attracted so many people around 6,000 that he had to stage six separate events to accommodate them all. And by the 1980s he was becoming internationally acclaimed, his company generating $50 million in sales worldwide in 1983.
He launched licences for collections of men’s underwear, sunglasses, luggage and bed linen, handbags and watches. His first fragrance, L’eau d’Issey for women, was introduced in 1992.
One of his biggest fans was Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs, whose trademark black turtleneck sweaters were designed by Miyake. Jobs was said to have 100 of them.
Miyake “retired” from the fashion world before the millennium to devote himself to research projects, handing over the design process to trusted associates, but the business remained privately owned and he continued to oversee all the collections.
With the architect Tadao Ando he launched Japan’s first design museum, 2121 Design Sight, and he set up Reality Lab, a young team of designers and engineers dedicated to bringing his radical ideas to fruition.
The Reality Lab shop in Tokyo was conceived as a showcase for these creations, among them the 132.5 clothes range, made from recycled materials; a lighting range, also from recycled materials; and his Bao Bao range of bags, inspired by Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
His many awards included Japan’s Order of Culture (2010), while in France he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1993 (advanced to Commandeur in 2016).
Early in his career Issey Miyake declared: “In Japanese we have three words: yofuku, which means Western clothing; wafuku, which means Japanese clothing; and fuku, which means clothing. Fuku can also mean good fortune, a kind of happiness. People ask me what I do. I don’t say yofuku or wafuku. I say I make happiness.”
Issey Miyake, born April 22 1938, died August 5 2022
The Daily Telegraph
