Issey Miyake

After surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a child, Miyake turned to clothes as a modern, optimistic form of creativity, and revived the use of ...

And the first 15 years of his atelier's production is captured in a lavishly cool monograph, Issey Miyake & Miyake Design Studio 1970-1985 (Works Words Years) (1985). A landmark retrospective of his workwas held at the National Art Center in Tokyo in 2016, covering 45 years of his design work. As well as the Met, his clothes are held by insitutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Denver Art Museum, where pieces by Miyake and Yamamoto are hung alongside Japanese traditional garments. Miyake handed over the running of his business, which had expanded into fragrances—including L'eau d'Issey—and other merchandise, to others in 1997, to focus on research into new fabrics and production techniques, fuelled by his interest in the connection between technology and creativity. In 2009, Miyake, who had long been reluctant to be labelled "the designer who survived the atomic bomb", wrote a powerful op-ed articleon his experience for the New York Times, in which he encouraged then-US president Barack Obama to visit the city to demonstrate his commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons. Miyake made another kind of headline when he supplied what became a trademark polyester-cotton turtleneck to the co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, a piece of clothing that became as much of a brand marker for the biggest tech company in the world as the bitten-apple logo and the curve of a corner on the iPhone. On a trip to Japan in the 1980s, Jobs had admired the practical chic of the grey uniforms worn by Sony workers, and that company's chief, Akio Morita, told him that Miyake had designed them. But Miyake, who did not care for the cost and impracticality of haute couture, brought this side of his work to the high street in 1993 with his Pleats Please clothes—now collectors' items—where heat-treated polyester was used to create genuinely unisex, permanently pleated, free-flowing, one-size-fits-all garments.

The Japanese designer died in a Tokyo hospital after a battle with cancer.

His spirit of joy, empowerment and beauty will be carried on by the next generations.” "Always a pioneer, Miyake both embraced traditional handcrafts but also looked to the next solution: the newest technology driven by research and development." Per his wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service held.

Following the news of Issey Miyake's death, we've highlighted seven projects created by the Japanese fashion designer over his five-decade-long career.

Issey Miyake acquired a motley crew of celebrity fans during his lifetime – from Steve Jobs to Kim Kardashian. Here are the celebrity fans of Issey Miyake.

One of Jones’s most memorable Miyake looks – a straw hat the size of a flying saucer – was referenced in the visuals surrounding Beyoncé’s latest album, Renaissance. In fact, the knowledge that Miyake was behind that indelible sweater may come as a surprise to those who are familiar with his runway collections. Despite his flair for the avant-garde, he was a designer for all.

From Pleats Please to his nineties cult fragrance, Isobel Van Dyke looks back at the five most pivotal moments of the late designer's career.

In 1983, Issey Miyake met legendary fashion photographer Irving Penn whilst both were working on an editorial shoot for American Vogue. The result of the meeting was a 13 year-long collaboration, several books and some of the most treasured images of Miyake’s work to exist. Pleats were a signature of Fortuny’s creations, but in the 80s, fashion editor Sylviia Rubin credited Miyake with ‘reinventing’ the Fortuny pleat. Mariano Fortuny opened his couture house in 1906 and based his gowns on the ease and lightness of Grecian tunics. Within Miyake’s ocean of knowledge, his pleats were the waves that caused ripples in every corner of the planet. In 1993 Issey Miyake launched Pleats Please - arguably the most recognisable branch of his work. To help paint a broader picture of the designer’s life, we’ve zoomed in on five key moments…