2014.02.28.

20:07 Issey Miyake - Style - How To Spend It

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Issey Miyakes unique, high-concept approach to design
has evolved into a multifaceted, independently owned empire.
Mark C OFlaherty is granted a very rare interview with a truly
modern icon
Issey Miyake with his IN-EI Mendori light, 635, at the Issey Miyake Inc headquarters in Tokyo
Image: Mark C OFlaherty
Some label him an artist, others see him as a style visionary, but more than anything else, Issey
Miyake is the designers designer. For more than four decades he has created textiles, clothing
and accessories for people who embrace contemporary visual culture, but who find the notion of
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2014.02.28. 20:07 Issey Miyake - Style - How To Spend It
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fashion at least slightly ludicrous. People, in fact, such as him. Sitting in a glass-walled corner
room of his Shibuya design studio overlooking Yoyogi Park, and surrounded by immaculate
postmodern vintage furniture by his late friend and collaborator Shiro Kuramata, he explains
his credo. I prefer the term making things, he says. I want to represent the action of
thinking. We are working towards the concept of [] no fashion.
Miyake has never been busier making things. In the past two years he has launched a wealth of
new clothing, fragrance, accessory and interiors lines, and has been campaigning for the
creation of Japans first major design museum. At the same time, his studio enjoys the same
credibility in the design world as the star architects who wear what comes out of it. With every
decade, the studio has become more technically ambitious, producing garments that often
transcend gender and flatter every body shape through elasticity and structure. As architect
Tadao Ando, who has known Miyake since 1972 and designed his 21_21 Design Sight public
gallery and research space in Tokyo, says: He has tirelessly persisted in exploring the
possibilities of a single piece of cloth. More than that, he has created clothes that people enjoy
wearing beyond their aesthetic appeal. His work can be sculptural and clever, but it is also
comfortable and empowering. Hes a brilliant man, says Zaha Hadid, who buys regularly from
his mainline collection. The clothes are versatile and you can travel with them everywhere.
When they are on show in the shop its one thing, but once you wear them, they become
something else. They are animated.
While many of his peers present collections that are alternately sepulchral for spring and
funereal for autumn, Miyake is a sunbeam of irreverent energy his presentations are full of
laughter, dance and joie de vivre. As are the clothes: this seasons dynamic, brightly coloured
Ray Stripe Dress (365) from the Pleats Please Issey Miyake label would be as at home on a
Caribbean beach as it would at a gallery opening. He may be a serious aesthete, but his sense of
fun and curiosity led him to the dancefloor of Studio 54 with Diana Vreeland, and to give over
the inaugural exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight to objects inspired by chocolate. Endearingly, his
favourite word to employ when describing what he considers his most successful work is
amusing. All I want, he says, is for people to experience a sense of joy when they wear my
clothes.
Unlike many conceptual designers who have attempted to carve a niche in apparel, the wearable
nature of Miyakes designs has resulted in a business that is as commercial as it is creative and
that remains independently owned. In 2012, a Pleats Please Issey Miyake fragrance (46 for
50ml) was launched to join the existing stable of five globally successful perfumes (a bottle of
LEau dIssey is sold every five minutes somewhere in the world, and a bottle of LEau dIssey
Pour Homme every seven minutes), while the neat, folding, sci-fi geometry of the bags in the
Bao Bao line (from 295) has made them a bestseller in myriad colourways and finishes. At the
end of last year he opened a new flagship store in Tokyo, named after his Reality Lab studio-
within-a-studio and stocking his innovative 132 5. Issey Miyake collections for men and women
and a brand-new menswear line, Homme Pliss Issey Miyake. He was, he says, responding to
demand: I discovered that around 10 per cent of Pleats Please was being bought by men.
Hence the new, similarly pleated range essentially, technologically advanced sportswear.
The new mens line was first seen in a spectacularly choreographed performance by the Aomori
University Mens Rhythmic Gymnastics team last July (Miyake was keen to support the team,
who are from a region that was badly affected by the 2011 earthquake), but it would be equally
suited, in basic black, to businessmen flying long-haul, looking for something comfortable, chic
and durable. The clothes are relaxing and not too tight. Its really important that they are worn
and not just for sports, says Miyake. They can work in an office environment. Indeed, Steve
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Jobs the very definition of the media professional wore Miyake black polo-neck jumpers for
more than two decades. And though there are always flights of futurist fantasy, the Issey Miyake
Men label is a good port of call for meticulous but relaxed tailoring (such as this seasons
Barathea jacket, 1,320) or a stylish, restrained pair of Side-Gore trainers (425), while the
more experimental 132 5. Issey Miyake line includes voluminous, practical raincoats (735)
made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), used in plastic bottles.
The hub of Miyakes empire is the Reality Lab department at the Miyake Design Studio. This is
where his small team including textile engineer Manabu Kikuchi, pattern engineer Sachiko
Yamamoto and employees who have been working with him since before the Issey Miyake brand
launched in 1971 articulate designs for the 132 5. collection that often have their basis in
complex computer-generated 3D shapes by Jun Mitani, associate professor at the Department
of Computer Science, Tsukuba University. 132 5. is one part origami, two parts advanced
mathematics; the result includes the new Grid cardigan (645) and skirt (425) with triangular
panels of grey, blue and green. For the 132 5. spring collection, dynamic helix shapes, originally
developed by scientists for solar panels orbiting the earth, have been reworked into flat patterns
and garments. The process is both difficult and extraordinary two things that clearly excite
Miyake, for whom the journey of creation is as stimulating as the end result.
Miyakes work is celebrated industry-wide, not only for its use of the most advanced technology
available (132 5. won The Design of the Year Award in the fashion category at the Design
Museum Awards in 2012), but also for its handcrafted components. He continues to patronise
the washi paper-makers of Tohoku for some of his most rarefied textiles, while some elements of
their traditional craft are echoed in the industrial production of textiles from recycled PET
bottles, currently used for his IN-EI lights, developed with Artemide (such as the Mendori light,
635, and the Minomushi Terra floor light, 1,380). One inspires the other. We need both
elements, he says. If we lose handcraft work, then we will ultimately see a future where no new
technology is created, either.
Designer Ron Arad has been a fan of Miyakes work since the 1980s and collaborated with him
and Miyakes then design partner, Dai Fujiwara, on his Ripple Chair project in 2006. He
believes that it is Miyakes embrace of technology that makes him so significant. The computer
is as much a tool as scissors, says Arad. And it doesnt matter how good the synthesiser is its
how good the musician is. You need to know how to accept and consume technology.
In addition to Miyakes own definitive private archive in Tokyo, his work is in the permanent
collections of the V&A in London, MoMa in New York and key museums worldwide. Item 11728
at the Kyoto Costume Institute is Miyakes 1982 Samurai rattan armour; as well as the label
fashion, Miyake has repeatedly shrugged off the definition Japanese designer, although
some of his early 1970s and 1980s work exaggerates and distorts the construction of the
traditional kimono. There are 192 Miyake pieces at the Institute some more Japanese than
others. The Institutes director and chief curator, Akiko Fukai, believes that the 2D aspects of his
clothing are most significant. Its a very abstract aesthetic, she says. When the Japanese start
to make clothes, they always think flat; they dont work on the human body. Miyake has always
tried to make clothes that are cosmopolitan, but they still start flat.
To illustrate her point, she shows a collection of items; the outline of each garment is perforated
into one single piece of knit tube, ready for cutting by the wearer. These are samples of the work
that Miyake produced with Fujiwara as part of their A-POC label, launched in 2000, elements of
which developed into what is now A-POC Inside. Like much of Miyakes Pleats Please work, and
the 132 5. range, it is appealingly graphic when its fabric is spread horizontally something
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photographer Irving Penn appreciated in his iconic images of Miyakes work, in which the
models legs and arms are out-thrust, emerging from dramatic, billowing fabric.
A-POC was the most exciting thing that has happened in industrial design, says Arad. The
more sophisticated a machine gets, the less machine-like the product is. And that sums up A-
POC for me. The concept was ingenious but challenging garments were finished by the
client. Final lengths were determined by cutting along lines in the cloth. You attack the fabric
with scissors and it doesnt fray, says Arad. Its amazing. Its the sort of thing that could only
come from Miyake and his collaborators. While the current A-POC Inside label now offers
ready!to!wear garments, many pieces still incorporate original A-POC techniques, with
demarcation lines for customers to cut and shorten themselves.
Along with the vertical integration of his company, its Miyakes enthusiasm for collaboration
that has given him his edge. His career began in the 1960s with spells working at Guy Laroche
and Givenchy in Paris and with Geoffrey Beene in New York. I was a foreigner, trying to
represent myself, he says. I looked at the designers in Paris and they were so sophisticated,
with such high-quality engineering. I wondered how I could surpass that. I came back to Tokyo
and looked for textile designers, pattern-cutters and people who could use great technology.
When Miyake talks about his studio now, it is as a collective.
Yoshiyuki Miyamae and Yusuke Takahashi currently design the mainline Issey Miyake and Issey
Miyake Men labels respectively, while Takahashi remains part of the Reality Lab team. Miyamae
focuses on channelling the intelligence, cheerfulness and inner beauty of the womenswear that
he believes are in the Miyake DNA, while for this spring Takahashis menswear is concerned
with traditional dyeing techniques. Ive tried to express a pop and fun aspect, he says. At the
same time, I am working with factories that have collaborated with Mr Miyake for years. And I
always ask myself is a certain design the most effective way of showing a textiles potential?
And is the idea new and fun as well as having masculine strengths and qualities? The new
seasons Wrinkle shirts (395) resemble colourfully pixellated Seurat canvases, while a batik
coat (1,425), shirt (750) and matching denim trousers (530) suggest the energy of Jackson
Pollock.
Before any collection makes it to Paris, everything is presented to Miyake himself at the studios
somi (general see). Changes are sometimes made, but Miyakes guiding hand is gentle and
generous. I always tell them that they dont need me, he says. But I have to make sure that
there is a concept with universal appeal. The work isnt complete unless someone wears it. Also,
I consider the somi a process of studying and learning for myself. Its crucial that the
designers are establishing their own ideas.
One particularly successful ongoing collaborative project at the Miyake studio is the line of
watches first launched in 2001 with a timepiece designed by Shunji Yamanaka, and now with
a permanent collection of 13 different styles by the likes of designer Ross Lovegrove and artist
Tokujin Yoshioka. The choice of designers is significant. They are all in line with Miyakes way
of thinking: they are all looking to the future, says Midori Kitamura, president of the Miyake
Design Studio. And all our collaborators are very established they dont need our support.
They want to work with us. The latest watch, released last year, is the Please Issey Miyake
(199) by Jasper Morrison, who was inspired to create a pleated surround for his timepiece after
seeing one of Irving Penns photographs of a Miyake garment. I was so impressed by the way
Penn captured the Issey Miyake design spirit that I thought I should do the same, he says. The
Miyake aesthetic is defined by a great eye for line and volume.
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When Miyake talks about inspiration, he frequently mentions the installation artist Christo and
the ceramicist Lucie Rie, whom he used to visit after showing in Paris each season to come back
to basics, or, as we say in Japanese, wash my eyes. But of all the figures who have influenced
him, designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi is the most revered.
There are superficial similarities between Noguchis iconic lanterns and Miyakes IN-EI lights,
but Miyakes work created applying the same mathematical theories of 3D design as in his 132
5. collection has a significantly different structure.
The PET re-treated fibre light starts flat, then unfolds and clicks into shape without any inner
frame. More than his own concerns with form and an enchantment with light and shadow,
Noguchis creative approach and notion of identity have shaped Miyakes work for decades
from his childhood when he became fascinated by the Noguchi-designed bridge that he had to
cross to get to school in Hiroshima every morning, to the later years they spent together as
friends.
I remember living in Paris in the 1960s, says Miyake. I looked in the mirror and saw some
funny-looking guy reflected back at me and wondered, How can I live here, as one of the few
Japanese men in France? That same day, Miyake happened upon one of Noguchis now-iconic
round pendant lights in a store in Saint-Germain and had a revelation about the global nature of
design and identity. I knew all about Noguchi, he recalls. He was born in the United States
and was trying to identify as Japanese, while I was the opposite Japanese and trying to live
globally. I realised right then that I needed to transcend the idea of being Japanese. Noguchis
creations didnt need any adjective. Today, I think I do represent some kind of Japanese
aesthetic and beauty, but I have never bettered Noguchis work. He is pure light. Maybe I am the
shadow.
Issey Miyake, 52 Conduit Street, London W1 (020-7851 4620). Pleats Please Issey Miyake, 20 Brook
Street, London W1 (020-7495 2306). Reality Lab, 1F, 5-3-10 Minami Aoyama Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062
(+813-3349 96476). www.isseymiyake.com.