The life and times of Issey Miyake

The man who modernised pleats and fashioned paper, wire and plastic into cult and contemporary clothing died in August, aged 84, from liver cancer. DANA THOMAS, who interviewed him many times over the course of his career, reflects on his life and legacy

- DANA THOMAS

ISSEY MIYAKE WAS fashion’s true futurist. The Japanese designer, who died from cancer in Tokyo at the age of 84, researched, experimented and innovated to push design forward and make it as democratic possible. He achieved this by combining high-tech with traditional design. As he once told me: “I am always thinking of tomorrow.”

This obsession was born in Paris, where he began his career in the mid1960s. Miyake, who, as a child survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, studied at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture—the school that produced Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Valentino Garavani—and he apprenticed in the studios of Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy. During those formative years, Miyake mastered the classic tailoring and draping of couture to create beautiful, one-of-a-kind clothes for the wealthy elite. But when he was caught up in the French student riots of 1968, he experienced an epiphany of sorts. “I questioned everything,” he told me. “I said, ‘I am a liar.’” He later told me for an article in WSJ magazine in 2012: “I realised that the future was in making clothing for the many, not the few. I wanted to make clothing that was as universal as jeans and T-shirts.”