Japanese designer Issey Miyake, famous for his never-wrinkled pleated clothing and who produced the signature black turtleneck sweater of his friend and Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs, has died, media reported on Tuesday. He was 84 years old.
Miyake, named after Japan’s economic and fashion prowess in the 1980s, died of liver cancer on August 5. Kyodo the news agency said. No further details are currently available.
Known for her practicality, Miyake is said to have wanted to be either a dancer or an athlete before reading her sister’s fashion magazines – it was these original interests that were believed to be behind the freedom of movement that her clothing allowed, which inspired her to change direction.
Miyake was born in Hiroshima and was seven years old when the atomic bomb fell on the city while he was in a class. She was reluctant to talk about the event later in life, she. In 2009, the article New York Times He said he didn’t want to be called the “designer who survived” the bomb, as part of his campaign to get then-US President Barack Obama to visit the city.
“When I close my eyes, I still see things that no one should experience,” he wrote, adding that within three years his mother died from exposure to radiation.
“I tried, unsuccessfully, to leave them behind, preferring to think about things that cannot be destroyed, created, that bring beauty and joy. Partly because it is a modern and optimistic creative format, I turned to the field of clothing design.”
After studying graphic design at an art university in Tokyo, she studied clothing design in Paris, where she worked with famous fashion designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy before moving to New York. He returned to Tokyo in 1970 and founded the Miyake Design Studio.
In the late 1980s, he developed a new pleating method by wrapping fabrics between layers of paper and placing them in a heat press, keeping the garments folded in shape. Tested for freedom of movement on dancers, this led to the development of his signature “Pleats, Please” line.
He developed more than a dozen fashion lines for men and women, from the main Issey Miyake to bags, watches and fragrances, before eventually retiring mainly to devote himself to research in 1997.
In 2016, when asked what challenges the designers of the future will face, the UK’s Guardian The newspaper that people probably consume less.
“We may have to go through a review process. This is important,” he was quoted as saying.
“We call the people who make clothing fashionistas in Paris – they develop new clothes – but actually the job of design is to make something that works in real life.”