The 84-year-old Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, known for his classic pleats, has passed away. His office informed CNN on Tuesday that he passed away from cancer on August 5.
His office announced that a funeral service had already been performed with his family and close friends and that no memorial service would be held in keeping with the designer’s wishes.
With his cutting-edge designs, Issey Miyake gained international recognition in the 1980s. Those who could afford his pricey pieces immediately regarded them as collector’s items. His designs are still on display today at places including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Biography Of Issey Miyake
1938 saw the birth of Issey Miyake in Hiroshima, Japan. His mother passed away from radiation exposure three years after the bomb that was placed on the city in 1945 left him with a distinct limp that would accompany him into adulthood.
He didn’t discuss his traumatic childhood until 2009, when he wrote about the experience in an op-ed in favor of nuclear disarmament that was published in the New York Times. He was determined not to be branded as the designer who escaped the atomic bomb.
Before relocating to Paris in 1965, Issey Miyake studied graphic design at Tokyo’s Tama Art University. He studied at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, a renowned school for tailoring and dressmaking, there.
Before relocating to New York to assist Geoffrey Beene, Issey Miyake worked for two of the most renowned names in haute couture while still in Paris, Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy.
He established his own design studio in Tokyo in 1970. His early creations expertly merged East and West combining tattoo and Japanese needlework techniques.
He started working on a new fabric in the 1980s that could stretch vertically with thousands of small folds. Henriette Negrin and her husband Mariano Fortuny’s pleated silk Delphos gowns from the early 1900s served as his inspiration.
Miyake stepped back from daily collection design for his own label in the late 1990s and relied on the assistance of other creative leaders in its place. The company’s current creative director is Satoshi Kondo.
But he continued to develop new ideas. Miyake established his Reality Lab in 2007 to investigate strong and environmentally friendly materials.
Miyake was well-known not only for his apparel but also for his perfumes. L’Eau d’Issey, the first, was introduced in 1992 and quickly rose to fame worldwide.
For his work as an artist and a fashion designer, Miyake has won numerous accolades. He received a Praemium Imperiale in 2005 from the Japan Arts Association in recognition of his excellent artistic achievement.
He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for lifetime achievement the following year, becoming the first fashion designer to do so.
In 2016, Miyake received the coveted Legion of Honor award from the French government, and the National Art Center in Tokyo mounted the largest exhibition of her career.
Miyake stuck to his skill as a couturier, which he had learnt as a young man, to the very end.
