"Irving Penn Regards The Work Of Issey Miyake Photographs 1975-1998" 1999 HOLBORN, Mark [essay by]

HOLBORN, Mark [essay by]

Bulfinch Press

1999

12 3/4" x 11"

Fine/ Fine

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For ten years Irving Penn - one of the greatest fashion photographers of the post-war era - and Issey Miyake - probably the only designer of the century to take design into the realm of art - have shared an extraordinary collaborative relationship. 'Penn's photographs allow me to see my own designs, ' claims Miyake. This book springs from Penn's huge regard for the Japanese designer -and his recognition that the photographs depict pure, timeless and sculptural designs, designs that run counter to all the eroticism displayed in fashion. The photographs are directly connected to Penn's celebrated ethnographical studies, just as the designs reflect Miyake's interest in a global culture. The collaboration has come to fruition at the end of the century, when the boundaries between East and West, so often challenged by Miyake, are finally being discarded.

Issey Miyake (三宅 一生, Miyake Issei, 22 April 1938- 5 August 2022) was a Japanese fashion designer. He was known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances, such as L'eau d'Issey, which became his most well-known product.

He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. He entered designs into fashion competition at the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo. However, he did not win a competition due to his lack of pattern-making or sewing skills. After graduation, he enrolled in the Chambre syndicale de la couture parisienne school in Paris and was apprenticed to Guy Laroche as assistant designer. He also worked with Hubert de Givenchy, drawing 50 to 100 sketches daily.

In 1969, he moved to New York City, where he met artists like Christo and Robert Rauschenberg. He was enrolled in English classes at Columbia University and worked on Seventh Avenue for designer Geoffrey Beene. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he founded the Miyake Design Studio, a high-end producer of women's fashion.

From a young age, Miyake respected artist Isamu Noguchi, whose newness and sense of fun in his designs inspired Miyake. He was also inspired by fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet's use of geometric calculations and "a single piece of beautiful cloth." In Paris, he visited several museums and he mentioned that he was influenced by sculptors such as Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti.

San Francisco Chronicle fashion editor Sylviia Rubin credits Miyake together with Babette Pinsky with "reinventing" the Fortuny pleat in the 1980s.

In the late 1980s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production. The garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric's 'memory' holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He did the costume for Ballett Frankfurt with an ultra feather-polyester jersey permanently pleated in a piece named "the Loss of Small Detail" William Forsythe and also work on ballet "Garden in the setting". Miyake realized that the new method of making clothes fit well in dancers. After studying how dancers move, he sent 200 to 300 garments for dancers to wear a different one in each performance of The Last Detail. This led to the development of the Pleats, Please range and inspired him to use dancers to display his work.

Legendary designer Geoffrey Beene stated that he admired Issey Miyake for Miyake's technique, this in an interview with poet/artist Steven Vita in Veery journal, 1991.

In March 1992 he was quoted in the International Herald Tribune as saying "Design is not for philosophy—it's for life."

Between 1996 and 1999 Miyake collaborated with artists for his Guest Artist series. The first collaboration was with the photographer and collage maker Yasumasa Morimura; the other artists were Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson, and Cai Guo-Qiang. Miyake stated that his intention was not to answer the question "Is fashion art?" but instead to create an "interactive relationship" between the art and the people who admired it. By wearing the artworks upon their bodies, the wearers interacted with fashion and art simultaneously.