A keen sportsman, function became the linchpin of Miyake’s work. His most famous and most affordable clothes, the Pleats Please line, was launched in 1993 as a retort to the price and unwearability of high-end fashion. It was Miyake’s cynicism about the fashion industry, in particular the speed at which it produced, that gave his designs such longevity in reputation and design. In an interview with the Village Voice in 1983, Miyake outlined his opposition to the fashion cycle: “I want my customer to be able to wear a sweater I designed 10 years ago with this year’s pants.”

After witnessing the 1968 student protests, Miyake became disenchanted by an industry designed to dress only the wealthy. It was this interest in fashion as art and function, democratic but aesthetically pleasing, which led him to establish the Miyake Design Studio in 1970, and show his first very wearable collection in New York in 1971. One of his earliest pieces was a jersey body, hand-painted using traditional Japanese tattoo techniques.Models display creations from Issey Miyake’s spring/summer 2023 men’s collection during Paris fashion week in June. Photograph: Mohammed Badra/EPA In a rare 2009 op-ed for the New York Times, Miyake recounted just how much that day, and his mother’s subsequent death, informed his creativity. “I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put them behind me, preferring to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. I gravitated toward the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo. But piqued by the crossover between disciplines, he pivoted to fashion and moved to Paris to become an apprentice to Guy Laroche and eventually work for Hubert de Givenchy around the time Audrey Hepburn was wearing his dresses. Mikyake saw technology as a solution to the problem of overproduction, with one such solution the late 90’s “One Piece of Cloth” idea (later known as A-POC) which pioneered the idea of making clothes out of a single tube of fabric, cutting down and waste and showing exactly what could be done with a knitting machine, a computer and the right knowhow. Loth to give interviews, Miyake had a pronounced limp – a result of surviving the 1945 atomic bomb dropped on his home town of Hiroshima when he was seven. Three years later, his mother died of radiation exposure.

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