Pleated to PERFECTION

The conceptual impact and technological savvy of Issey Miyake.

- SANJEEVA SURESH

A 50-year-old Issey Miyake is at a crossroads. The year is 1988 and the Japanese designer feels creatively stifled. Despite his successes and positive reception in Paris, he feels -professionally stagnant. "I doubted my will to continue in the late 1980s, I realised that my work was faltering.

I despaired," he said in the 2002 documentary Issey Miyake Moves, written and directed by Setsuko Miura. It was then that his idea of pleats were born. It was a revolution, the antithesis of what he saw in '60s Europe which he deemed as complicated, restrictive clothing sculpted onto the body. His designs put distance between clothing and the human form, giving them movement and bringing forth a new era of freedom. His pleated designs, first seen in 1988 were a result of the designer's yearning to adapt and grow; a combination of fashion and functionality. Working on pleats lead Miyake to get out of his static state of mind it was the idea that set him free. It would later be said that "pleats were Issey's bridge from the '80s to the '90s." However the legacy he left behind went far further than a decade.

The late Issey Miyake was more than the prince of pleats, he was the master of movement. In 1965, Miyake moved to Paris to study haute couture at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. By the following year he was already working alongside Guy Laroche and Hubert De Givenchy as a design assistant before returning to Tokyo to set up the Miyake Design Studio in 1970. He left Paris with a changed perception on fashion and couture after witnessing the 1968 student protests. The demonstrations would have a part in shaping his creative outlook and sartorial nonconformity.