About

Issey Miyake is the most well-known Japanese designer in the world, having successfully merged East and West in his designs. Issey Miyake was born in Hiroshima, Japan on 22 April 1938. He studied at the Tama Art University in Tokyo during which time he assembled his first fashion collection, which he named "The Poem of Material and Stone" In 1964 he graduated from the University of Tokyo. In 1965 he moved to Paris to study design at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. In 1966 he left to work as an assistant designer at Guy Laroche. He also worked in the studio of another great couturier Hubert de Givenchy. However, he felt out of step with the posed formality of the haute couture approach to dressing which was all that Paris could offer to women at that time. However, revolution was in the air, and such designers as Courreges and Cardin were designing modern clothes.

In 1969 Issey Miyake left for New York. He worked as a designer for Geoffrey Beene, producing ready-to-wear clothes and enjoying the atmosphere of the city. He was also refining his ideas about dress and the function of fashion. Was the result, was his theory of peeling away to the limit, throwing away all the inhibiting ideas about dress and starting again from the beginning.

In 1970 Miyake returned to Tokyo to make his ideas concrete.

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The Look

Miyake's skill with fabric is rooted in his knowledge of traditional Japanese fabrics and fabric-production techniques. The ascendancy of denim in the sixties and seventies turned his attention to Japanese workwear fabrics: ticking stripe, heavy cottons, quilting. These he incorporated into his work both in their original form and in wonderfully elaborated forms, waffle textures, heavy coarse weaves, rich seersucker effects, wrinkled, crinkled, primitive pleating and occasionally smocked. Combined with Miyake's sophisticated colour sense, the effect of all this sensuous texture was completely fresh. Textured fabrics when employed by other designers, tended to be conventionally rich - velvet, plain, panne or printed, brocade, damask, corduroy or applique work, embroidery or lace, nubbled or hairy tweed. Even when used in fresh unexpected ways other designers cannot compete with the fabrics Miyake has developed, which respond well to being intricately cut, seamed, darted and fitted. This is consistent with his vision. He says " I like to work in the spirit of the Kimono, between the body and the fabric there exists only an approximate contact." He does not use the kimono itself as many Western designers do, to add a touch of exoticism. He merely borrows its attributes of ease, adaptability and respect for the fabric and the patterns and shapes in space with it can create when the body moves. If he sounds serious about his design philosophy, we he is. But he also has a rich sense of humour which contributes substantially to his famous charm. He loves to make extravagant statements when he sends his models down the runway in shiny fibreglass breastplates, or perky nipples or polished wickerwork torso cages shaped like Samurai armour. His use of wrapping and tying techniques for the fastening of his clothes is also based on Japanese tradition. The kimono has no closure and it closed by tying the obi around the waist. He makes clothes like 18th century Buddhist priests, where patchwork rectangles were meant to suggest the humility of tatters, although they were actually stitched from the finest of antique brocades. Miyake refines and passes on the inherently Japanese vision. His loose, even formless clothes mock the perfect-toned "me decade" body, he makes fashion retrospective.

Perfumes

1992 L'Eau de Issey (W)
1994 L'Eau de Issey pour homme
1995 Sun Mist (W)
1998 Le Feu d'Issey (W)
2000 Le Feu d'Issey Light (W)
2000 L'Eau d'Issey d'Ete Relaxante (W)
2001 Soleil d'Issey (W)
2001 Lune d'Issey (W)
2002 Air and Light(W)
2002 Lumiere d'Issey (M)
2002 Soothing Night (W)
2002 L'Eau d'Issey d'Ete (W)
2003 L'Eau d'Issey Souffle (W)
2003 L'Eau d'Issey Souffle (M)
2004 L'Eau Bleue d'Issey (M)
A new Issey Miyake men's fragrance, L'eau d'Issey Pour Homme Intense, was introduced at Nordstrom in the United States in June 2007, with a larger worldwide rollout following in September 2007. Issey Miyake fragrances are produced under a long-term agreement by the Beauté Prestige International division of Shiseido, who also produces fragrances for Narciso Rodriguez and Jean-Paul Gaultier.
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