Japanese designer Issey Miyake dies at 84

Japanese designer Issey Miyake has died of liver cancer at the age of 84, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Known for his sculptural approach to design and his innovation with fabrics, the creator, who died on August 5, had been retired since 1997 and focused on researching materials from his studio in Tokyo.

After studying Graphic Design in Tokyo and Fashion Design at the Parisian Chambre Syndicale, Miyake (Hiroshima, 1938) worked under Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, learning the craft techniques of Parisian haute couture.

After a brief stay in New York, in 1970 he would open his studio in the Japanese capital.

Inspired by Madeleine Vionnet's bias cut dresses and Brancusi's sculpture, the designer sought from the start to create fashion capable of integrating and interacting with the body and movement.

In the early seventies of the last century he made his debut at the Paris fashion week.

His radical proposals, in which the fabric and its characteristics marked the rest of the garment's attributes, earned him a solid fan base in Europe and the United States.

Issey Miyake, during his spring-summer collection show in Paris in October 1991. PIERRE GUILLAUD (AFP)

In his obsession with seeking a kind of visually simple yet technically innovative uniform, Miyake experimented over the next few decades with garments in motion, through the study of contemporary ballet.

This is how he came to create

in the early 1990s, a successful line of pleated polyester basics that expand and contract with movement and do not require special care;

or the Bao Bao bag, capable of acquiring different shapes from different plastic triangles joined by a cloth.

In 1997, he decided to focus his efforts on textile research and hand over the creative direction of his fashion lines to his right-hand man, Naoki Takizawa.

It is during those years that he creates A-POC (acronym for

), a revolutionary technique of making a single piece of fabric that takes shape from a loom linked to a computer.

Meanwhile, he marketed through the Shiseido group L'Eau d'Issey, a light fragrance inspired by water that is still a success today.

Fragrances were, in fact, responsible for Miyake becoming known to the general public, together with the black polyester sweaters he made for his friend Steve Jobs, he sent the creator of Apple more than a hundred, and that the tech tycoon used as dictated by the designer's philosophy, like a uniform to wear every day.

Detail of one of the garments that the designer presented at a parade in Paris in March 1995. Alexis DUCLOS (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Curiously, the apparent simplicity of the proposals devised by the Japanese were combined with a way of communicating them that was close to a work of art.

Miyake regularly collaborated with the Austrian potter Lucie Rie making buttons and trimmings and worked for years with her admirer Irving Penn, creating one of the most fruitful creative dialogues between fashion and photography of the late 20th century.

Protagonist of different retrospective exhibitions around the world, in 2010 he received the medal of the order of Japanese culture, one of the highest distinctions in the country.

“I see this award as a way of supporting the people I work with.

I am not only talking about the designers, but also about the weavers, seamstresses and everyone involved in innovating and creating beautiful pieces despite the country's economic difficulties, ”she told

magazine at the time .

Since 2020, Satoshi Kondo is the artistic director of her fashion lines, which continue to be presented in Paris, most often through dancers.

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