Issey Miyake

Some label him an artist, others see him as a style visionary, but more than anything else, Issey Miyake is the designer’s designer. For more than four decades he has created textiles, clothing and accessories for people who embrace contemporary visual culture, but who find the notion of “fashion” at least slightly ludicrous. People, in fact, such as him. Sitting in a glass-walled corner room of his Shibuya design studio overlooking Yoyogi Park, and surrounded by immaculate postmodern vintage furniture by his late friend and collaborator Shiro Kuramata, he explains his credo. “I prefer the term ‘making things’,” he says. “I want to represent the action of thinking. We are working towards the concept of […] no fashion.” 

Miyake has never been busier “making things”. In the past two years he has launched a wealth of new clothing, fragrance, accessory and interiors lines, and has been campaigning for the creation of Japan’s first major design museum. At the same time, his studio enjoys the same credibility in the design world as the star architects who wear what comes out of it. With every decade, the studio has become more technically ambitious, producing garments that often transcend gender and flatter every body shape through elasticity and structure. As architect Tadao Ando, who has known Miyake since 1972 and designed his 21_21 Design Sight public gallery and “research space” in Tokyo, says: “He has tirelessly persisted in exploring the possibilities of a single piece of cloth.” More than that, he has created clothes that people enjoy wearing beyond their aesthetic appeal. His work can be sculptural and clever, but it is also comfortable and empowering. “He’s a brilliant man,” says Zaha Hadid, who buys regularly from his mainline collection. “The clothes are versatile and you can travel with them everywhere. When they are on show in the shop it’s one thing, but once you wear them, they become something else. They are animated.”