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Japanese designer Issey Miyake is dead

2022-08-09T15:02:11.218Z


Designer, fashion and perfume creator: In the eighties Issey Miyake was a symbol of Japan's rise. He was also famous for making clothes from just one piece of fabric. Now he died at the age of 84.


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Issey Miyake in 2016

Photo: Franck Robichon / picture alliance / dpa

Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake is dead. He died of liver cancer on August 5, according to his office, according to media reports.

Miyake was 84 years old.

The man, who was famous for his wrinkle-free clothes, among other things, had been pursuing the concept of making clothes from a single piece of fabric since the 1970s.

In the '80s, Miyake became synonymous with Japan's commercial and fashion success.

Legend has it that the designer originally wanted to be a dancer or athlete before reading his sister's fashion magazines inspired him to change directions.

"When I close my eyes, I still see things that no one should ever experience"

Born in Hiroshima, Miyake was seven years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city while sitting in a classroom.

In later life he was reluctant to talk about this event.

In 2009, he wrote in the New York Times, as part of a campaign to get then-US President Barack Obama to visit the city, that he didn't want to be labeled "the designer who survived the bomb". will.

"When I close my eyes I still see things no one should ever see," he wrote, adding that his mother died within three years of complications from the radiation.

“I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put them behind me, preferring to think of things to create rather than destroy, and which bring beauty and joy.

I was drawn to apparel design because it's a modern and upbeat creative format," Miyake continued.

After studying graphic design at an art university in Tokyo, he studied clothing design in Paris, where he worked with famous fashion designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy before moving to New York.

In 1970 he returned to Tokyo and founded the Miyake Design Studio.

In the late 1980s he developed a new way of pleating, wrapping fabrics between layers of paper and placing them in a heat press, allowing the garments to retain their pleated shape.

This method was tested on dancers for freedom of movement and led to the development of his signature "Pleats Please" line.

Nobel Prize in the Arts

Miyake developed more than a dozen clothing lines in all, but also bags, watches and perfumes, before largely retiring in 1997 to devote himself to research.

In 2005 he was honored for his life's work with the Japanese »Praemium Imperiale«, which is also considered the Nobel Prize for the Arts.

A year later he was awarded the Kyoto Prize for his »visionary clothing concepts«.

The Kyoto Prize, established in 1984 by Kazuo Inamori, the founder of the Japanese technology group Kyocera, is one of the most important awards in the field of science and culture, alongside the Nobel Prize.

svs/Reuters/dpa

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2022-08-09

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