Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake dead at 84 CBC News

Issey Miyake, who built one of Japan’s biggest fashion brands and was known for his boldly shaped signature pleated pieces, has died. He was 84.

Miyake died of liver cancer on Aug. 5, the Miyake Design Office announced on Tuesday.

Miyake defined an era in Japan’s modern history and rose to prominence in the 1970s among a generation of designers and artists who achieved world fame by defining a Japanese vision unique to the West.

Miyake’s origami-esque folds typically transformed coarse polyester into chic. He also used computer technology in weaving to make clothes. His down-to-earth attire was meant to celebrate the human body regardless of race, build, size, or age.

Miyake even loathed being labeled a fashion designer, choosing not to identify with what he saw as frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumerism. He was best known as the designer behind Apple founder Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck sweater.

Time and time again, Miyake returned to his basic concept of starting with a single piece of fabric – be it draped, folded, cut or wrapped.

Over the years he has drawn inspiration from a wide variety of cultures and social motifs, as well as from everyday objects – plastic, rattan, washi paper, jute, horsehair, foil, yarn, tie-dye, indigo dyes and wire.

In the late 1980s he developed a new way of folding, wrapping fabrics between layers of paper and placing them in a heat press, with the garments retaining their pleated shape. Tested on dancers for freedom of movement, this led to the development of his signature “Pleats, Please” line.

Although he made clothes that went beyond the mundane and seemed to reach for the spiritual, he made a point of never being ostentatious and always endorsed the t-shirt-and-jeans look.

“Design is like a living organism in that it pursues what is important to its well-being and continued existence,” Miyake once wrote in his book.

Influenced by Hiroshima experience

His office confirmed that a private funeral had already taken place and that other ceremonies would not take place in accordance with Miyake’s wishes. Miyake kept his family life private, and there are no known survivors.

Born in Hiroshima, Miyake was seven years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city while he was in a classroom. He was reluctant to speak of the event in later life. Writing in the New York Times in 2009, as part of a campaign to persuade then-US President Barack Obama to visit the city, he said he didn’t want to be called “the designer who survived the bomb”. .

“When I close my eyes I still see things no one should ever experience,” he wrote, saying his mother died within three years of exposure to radiation.

“I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put them behind me and prefer to think of things that can be created and not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. I was drawn to the field of clothing design, also because it’s a creative format that’s modern and optimistic.”

Early stays with Laroche, Givenchy

After studying graphic design at an art university in Tokyo, he studied clothing design in Paris, where he worked with famous fashion designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy before moving to New York. In 1970 he returned to Tokyo and founded the Miyake Design Studio.

Miyake was a star as soon as he hit the European catwalks. His brown top, which combined the Japanese stitched fabric called “sashiko” with raw silk knit, was featured on the cover of Elle magazine’s September 1973 issue.

He pioneered gender roles, asking feminist Fusae Ichikawa to be his model in the 1970s—when she was in her 80s—sending the message that clothes should be comfortable and the natural beauty of real people have to express.

Eventually, he developed more than a dozen clothing lines, ranging from his main Issey Miyake line for men and women, to bags, watches and fragrances, before essentially retiring in 1997 to pursue research.

In 1992, Miyake was commissioned to design the official Olympic uniform for Lithuania, which had just gained independence from the Soviet Union.