Issey Miyake

Miyake was born Kazunaru Miyake (三宅 一生, Miyake Kazunaru) on 22 April 1938 in Hiroshima. He was still living in the city seven years later when the U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb there in August 1945, which led to his mother's death. He first disclosed this in 2009, when Barack Obama advocated for global nuclear disarmament.

As a child, Miyake wanted to become a dancer. His interest in fashion started by studying his sister's fashion magazines. He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. He entered designs into fashion competition at the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo. However, he did not win a competition due to his lack of pattern-making or sewing skills. After graduation, he enrolled in the Chambre syndicale de la couture parisienne school in Paris and was apprenticed to Guy Laroche as assistant designer. He also worked with Hubert de Givenchy, drawing 50 to 100 sketches daily.

In 1969, Miyake moved to New York City, where he met Christo, Robert Rauschenberg, Joe Eula and Donna Jordan. He was enrolled in English classes at Columbia University and worked on Seventh Avenue for designer Geoffrey Beene. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he founded the Miyake Design Studio, a high-end producer of women's fashion.

From a young age, Miyake respected artist Isamu Noguchi, whose novelty and sense of fun in his designs inspired Miyake. He was also inspired by fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet's use of geometric calculations and "a single piece of beautiful cloth". In Paris, he visited several museums and he mentioned that he was influenced by sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși and Alberto Giacometti.

In the late 1980s, Miyake began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production. The garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric's 'memory' holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear.

Miyake had a long friendship with Austrian-born pottery artist Dame Lucie Rie. She presented him with her archival ceramic buttons, which he integrated into his designs.

For 13 years from 1986, Miyake collaborated with photographer Irving Penn.

Miyake also developed a friendship with Apple's Steve Jobs, who came to him after seeing the uniforms Miyake designed for employees of Sony's factories. At Jobs's request, Miyake designed similar vests for Apple employees, but Jobs encountered strong opposition to the idea of a uniform. Nonetheless, Miyake went on to produce the black turtlenecks which would become a part of Jobs' signature attire. Jobs said, "So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them."

Fashion designer Geoffrey Beene stated that he admired Issey Miyake for Miyake's technique, this in an interview with poet/artist Steven Vita in Veery journal, 1991.

In March 1992, Miyake was quoted in the International Herald Tribune as saying "Design is not for philosophy—it's for life."

Between 1996 and 1999, Miyake collaborated with artists for his Guest Artist series. The first collaboration was with the photographer and collage maker Yasumasa Morimura; the other artists were Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson, and Cai Guo-Qiang. Miyake stated that his intention was not to answer the question "Is fashion art?" but instead to create an "interactive relationship" between the art and the people who admired it. By wearing the artworks upon their bodies, the wearers interacted with fashion and art simultaneously.

Miyake was also one of the co-Directors of 21 21 Design Sight, Japan's first design museum.

Miyake died of liver cancer on 5 August 2022, at the age of 84.

The Miyake Issey Foundation, founded in Tokyo in 2004, operates the 21_21 Design Sight center, organizes exhibitions and events, and publishes literature.

21 21 Design Sight (a play on 20/20 vision) is a museum-style research center for design, constructed by Tadao Ando, that was opened in Roppongi, Tokyo in March 2007. The center was headed by Issey Miyake (until his death in 2022) and four other Japanese designers, and operated by The Miyake Issey Foundation.