(CNN) --
Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer whose timeless pleats made him an industry favorite, died at age 84 of cancer on August 5, his office confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.
According to his office, a funeral service has already been held with his family and close friends, adding that no memorial service will be held, in accordance with the designer's wishes.
Miyake rose to international fame in the 1980s with avant-garde designs that those who could afford his luxurious pieces immediately regarded as collector's items.
Today, his designs are housed in such institutions as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
He also found a lifelong customer in Steve Jobs, who wore his black turtlenecks almost exclusively starting in the 1980s.
Issey Miyake photographed in Tokyo in 2015. (Credit: Masahiro Sugimoto/The Yomiuri/Reuters)
Miyake was born in the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1938. The bomb that fell on the city in 1945 left him with a pronounced limp that would accompany him into adulthood, and his mother died three years later from radiation exposure.
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Determined not to be labeled the designer who escaped the atomic bomb, he did not mention his traumatic childhood until 2009, when he wrote about the experience in an opinion piece in support of nuclear disarmament published in The New York Times.
Miyake studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo before moving to Paris in 1965. There he enrolled at the renowned tailoring and dressmaking school École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.
During his stay in Paris, Miyake worked for Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, two of the biggest names in haute couture, before moving to New York to assist Geoffrey Beene.
In 1970, he founded his own design studio in Tokyo.
His early work skillfully blended East and West, using Japanese embroidery techniques and tattoo designs.
A model walks the Issey Miyake runway at Paris Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2018.
(Photo: Richard Bord/WireImage/Getty Images)
It was in the 1980s that he began to develop a new fabric that could expand vertically with hundreds of tiny pleats.
She was inspired by the Delphos pleated silk dresses designed by Henriette Negrin and her husband Mariano Fortuny in the early 20th century.
Miyake took his idea a step further, blending traditional and newly developed techniques to create permanently pleated garments that were both fashion-forward and comfortable, architectural and natural.
He never stopped innovating.
In 2007, Miyake launched his Reality Lab to explore durable and environmentally sustainable materials.
In addition to his clothing, Miyake was also known for his line of fragrances.
The first, L'Eau d'Issey, was launched in 1992 and became an international bestseller.
Miyake received multiple awards for his work as a fashion designer and as an artist.
In 2005, the Japan Association of the Arts awarded him the Praemium Imperiale for his outstanding achievements.
A year later he became the first fashion designer to receive the Kyoto Prize for Art and Philosophy for his lifetime achievement.
In 2016, the French government awarded Miyake the prestigious Legion of Honor, and the Tokyo National Art Center organized the most comprehensive exhibition of Miyake's career.
Until the end, Miyake remained faithful to the dressmaker's trade that he had learned as a young man.
"Technology is valuable in a world with diminishing resources in terms of decreasing waste and facilitating mass production," he told CNN in 2016, "but we can never lose sight of the power of the touch of human hands." ".
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