ISSEY MIYAKE

Founded in Tokyo in 1970 by Issey Miyake (1938 to 2022), who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the age of seven and spent his career in the opposite territory: making things that honour the living body. He studied graphic design at Tama Art University, then trained at the Chambre Syndicale in Paris under Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, followed by a year in New York with Geoffrey Beene, before returning to Tokyo to open Miyake Design Studio in April 1970. His first collection followed in 1971. His work treated clothing as an engineering problem rather than a seasonal proposition, pursuing garments that move with the body, resist wrinkling, fold flat, and require no maintenance. He preferred the word clothing to fashion, and stepped back from the mainline in 1999 to concentrate on research, handing the collections to a succession of designers while the studio's material investigations continued under his direction.

The house operates across distinct lines: ISSEY MIYAKE (1970, mainline womenswear), ISSEY MIYAKE MEN (1976, dedicated menswear; showing in Paris from AW1985), I.S. / ISSEY MIYAKE SPORT (1980s, sportswear diffusion, later led by Tsumori Chisato), Plantation (1981, casual diffusion built on natural fabrics), PLEATS PLEASE ISSEY MIYAKE (1994, an independent brand built on garment pleating applied after construction, developed within the mainline from 1988), A-POC (2000, from a concept announced in 1998 and developed with engineer Dai Fujiwara: garments knit as continuous tubes and cut free by the wearer; absorbed into the mainline in 2007 as A-POC INSIDE, relaunched in 2021 as A-POC ABLE), me ISSEY MIYAKE (2000, one-size stretch pieces sold rolled in a tube), HaaT (2000, directed by textile designer Makiko Minagawa), BAO BAO ISSEY MIYAKE (2010, geometric bags built from triangular panels), 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE (2010, origami folding structures in recycled materials), HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE (2013, pleating for menswear), IM MEN (2021).