The Spirit of Issey Miyake: Designing experimental clothing in the 90s
FASHION, SPIRIT — SUMMER 2022
When clothing transcends fashion and becomes a work of art, the body becomes a revolutionary tool for self-expression.
In summer, I often enter a prolonged period of reflection, conjured by both familiar and unknown art and muses. There is one designer whose airy pleated garments have somehow sparked so much wonder for me in the hot hazy days of June and July.
My curiosity pulled me closer to embark on a study of revered Japanese designer Issey Miyake.
Magnetized to the brilliance of his delicate, folding, geometric garments — I quickly learned that the spirit of Issey embodies comfort, ease, and beauty that makes the body feel like a work of art.
In the process of writing this piece, Issey Miyake passed away at the age of 84 on August 5th. This news weighed heavy on many, yet it has suddenly shined a bright light on his humble legacy and how his visual language continually inspires contemporary fashion.
Before this news, I told myself I wanted to devote a few long nights to dig into my own research of Issey’s life & creation history — I wondered, what did his early collections look and feel like?
How did his work help define the zeitgeist of the 90s, and how is the spirit of the 90s alive today?
Which choices in the clothing reveal his values and thought process? What makes Issey, Issey?
Issey Miyake SS 1996, hair by John Sahag
no. 1 — Artist Collaborations
Today, we see fashion houses collaborating with artists left and right — but in the 90s, this kind of co-creation was more rare. Staying true to Miyake’s vision of being an ‘experimental clothing laboratory,’ his own Miyake Design Studio embarked on a series of four distinct artist collaborations from 1996-1998. Yasumasa Morimura was the first to see their art printed onto the iconic pleated garments, to become known as the Pleats Please Guest Artist Series. In this photographic work, Morimura revisits & remixes the 1856 painting ‘La fuente / The Source’ by French neo-classical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
Pleats Please Guest Artist Series, no. 1 — Issey Miyake x Yasumasa Morimura (1996)
The layering and mirroring of the body in Morimura’s work mirrors Miyake’s respect for the body’s comfort and free-spirited, earthly beauty. After Morimura, the studio collaborated with Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson, and controversial artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Together, these pieces were presented in the 1998 exhibition “Issey Miyake: Making Things” — at Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris.
Pleats Please Guest Artist Series, no. 2 — Issey Miyake x Nobuyoshi Araki (1997)
Pleats Please Guest Artist Series no.4: 'Dragon Explosion' by Issey Miyake x Cai Guo-Qiang (1998)
In 2016, we saw Phoebe Philo’s spring/summer 2017 collection at Céline feature a dress imprinted with an International blue body impression — paying homage to experimental French conceptual artist Yves Klein. This collaboration felt directly reminiscent of Miyake’s collab with Cai Guo-Qiang, where gunpowder blackens a supremely elegant white pleated dress.
no. 2 — The spirit of the 90s
By 1999, Issey had reached what he thought would be his permanent exit out of the fashion landscape to refocus his work on textiles. In many ways, his pieces always placed attention on the relationship between textile and body — giving the fabric itself a way to be noticed as clearly as the whole garment.
In his final runway show, 23 models emerged bound together via a ribbon of red fabric, with a top and skirt molded to their bodies.
no. 3 — Dreaming as a form of innovation
A new question I have been asking myself — how do you believe in your own dream? How does dreaming allow us to innovate our own lives?
Issey Miyake was both a dreamer and a realist, using reality as a canvas to excavate unseen works of art for the body.
Issey’s geometric pleats, bends, and folds create volumes that extend the human silhouette in imaginative forms. Our bodies can feel like joyful, experimental vessels. We can feel artistic inside and out, independent by nature. The shapes and textures we wear can feel revolutionary, yet functional.
Though many of his designs are revered as a pinnacle of avant-garde fashion, Issey resisted the word “fashion” and lived by his vision of simply making clothing for humans to live in.
