Remembering Issey Miyake: The Legacy in Haute Couture, Beyond, and Before
Issey Miyake was a world-renowned fashion designer who grew up in 1940s Hiroshima, Japan, and his rise to prominence in the industry is legendary. His novel creative vision in the 1970s lit the torch of his career.
Issey Miyake's clothes look like remarkable feats of wearable origami. He achieved a lifetime of accomplishments within the industry, creating a namesake couture brand that is undeniably recognizable on a massive, international scale.
“I gravitated toward the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic”
Among Miyake’s most notable fashion collections is the ‘71 Spring/Summer runway show in New York which launched his magnitude of fame within the fashion universe. The collection notably showcased pleated attire, varying silhouettes, and a wondrous color palette. He displayed sustainably made polyfibres, plastic, and nylon, utilizing everlasting fabrics.
His revolutionary work included creating pleats through thermally processed polyester textiles not pleated before sewing. Issey’s Rhythm Pleats collection was inspired by the French artist Henri Rosseau.
Issey started his first ready-to-wear collection in 1970, shifting direction to modernize clothing for an innumerable target audience of millennials. He loved using one piece of cloth for a garment because he desired to recreate the fashion he saw in Africa.
In 1973, Miyake debuted his collection at Paris Fashion Week. He later opened his first store in Paris in 1975. Issey Miyake, the label, grew to 300 retail stores globally, with flagship stores in Zurich, Milan, London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
Today, Issey Miyake is a powerhouse within the industry, standing like a willow on its humble beginnings and supernova breakthrough after 1970. In the 1990s, Issey expanded to fragrances, launching the phenomenal women’s perfume “L’eau d’Issey” in ‘92.
Issey founded numerous fashion brands: IM MEN (a menswear brand founded in 2021), 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE (recycled material brand founded in 2010), Pleats PLEASE ISSEY MIYAKE (original yarn brand), Issey Miyake Fête (colorful technological brand founded in 2004), HaaT (womenswear line), and A-POC (menswear and womenswear brand founded in 1998).
Issey Miyake’s personal life began with a tragic event that forever altered the course of his life and the people around him. He was 7 years old, standing outside of his elementary school when the atomic bomb landed in his hometown on August 6th, 1945. He walked 2.3 km across Ground Zero until he found his mother in the wreckage.
Issey grew up as one of the survivors in an impoverished ghost town riddled with sickness. He dreamed of creating beautiful art to show the world he could inspire happiness, not destruction. He also suffered the aftereffects of the bomb and was treated for radiation illness throughout the rest of his life.
His mother succumbed to illness three years after the Hiroshima bomb. In her last three years of life, Issey’s mother helped Issey recover from periostitis and osteomyelitis (radiation-induced illnesses). Several of Issey’s good friends and schoolmates passed away due to radiation-caused disease.
In 2009, Issey wrote “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. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure.”
Issey preferred to “think of things that can be created, not destroyed, that bring beauty and joy.”
Miyake’s immense talent led him to study graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1959, then he graduated in 1964. Masako Shirasu, a writer and owner of a dye shop in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district, motivated Issey to delve into clothing design. Shirasu’s shop of varying textiles promoted Issey’s curiosity about creating art for people’s bodies.
Post-war Japan set aside a small budget for gifted fashion design students to study haute couture abroad.
In 1965, Japan sent 27-year-old Issey to Paris to study haute couture at the esteemed École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. During the next four years, Issey worked for French couturiers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy in Paris. Later, Issey moved to New York to work under American designer Geoffrey Beene.
He opened his design studio, self-titled Issey Miyake, in Tokyo in 1970.
Issey never wanted to be defined as the designer who survived the Hiroshima bomb. Miyake “always avoided questions about Hiroshima. They made [him] uncomfortable.”
Issey aspired to be known for the futuristic clothes he designed, not the sorrow of his childhood. The National Art Center in Tokyo honored Miyake’s work with a large-scale exhibition celebrating his designs in 2016.
In August 2022, Issey Miyake passed away from liver cancer at age 84, in Tokyo, Japan. He left behind a legacy of fulfilled fashion dreams, modernistic, intrinsic design, and forward-thinking innovation.