His garments are like works of art – beautiful and innovative. For years the Japanese designer Issey Miyake has shown an innovative approach to fashion – it was he who invented the seamless clothes and the gorgeous pleated fabrics, but above all it was he who has always desired democratic and universal fashion that is independent of geographic location. His clothes combine elements of Japanese culture (colour and patterns) with the latest Paris or New York trends, while his fashion shows were the first ones in the 1970’s to include black or elderly models.
Born in 1938 in Hiroshima, he studied graphic art at Tama Art University and moved to Paris in the mid-1960’s, where he worked in the large couture houses of Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, and later for Geoffrey Beene in New York. In 1970 in Tokyo he founded the Miyake Design Studio. Issey Miyake was the first Japanese to show his collections at European Paris Fashion Week in 1973. As a great innovator he would make his clothes of oiled paper and metal-reinforced fabrics. One can see and read about his renown, specially pleated jerseys and colorful garments made of these in the book entitled Pleats Please (published by Taschen).
New fabrics and technologies of clothes manufacturing are also a key section in the fashion museum 21-21 Design Sight, which the Miyake Issey Foundation opened in Tokyo in 2007.