Issey Miyake and the Endless Thread

A very brief overview of a long and influential career in art that transcended fashion, leaving a considerable cultural legacy…

Issey Miyake was one of the few fashion designers I own books about. I regularly loaned them to art students I was teaching, for whom he proved a perennial inspiration — and not only for those specialising in fashion and textiles.

designed by Issey Miyake: ‘Caftan Dress’ in indigo batik cotton (1984), ‘Flying Saucer Dress’ (1994), and ‘Pleated Ensemble’ (2004) [view license 1 and 2 and 3 ]

Though he was a remarkable fashion designer with a consistent aesthetic, he was never predictable and always innovative. Miyake expanded the formal linguistics of three-dimensional design, pushing the concept of clothing into the realm of kinetic sculpture. To him, fashion was a collaborative platform for accessible conceptual art.

At the core of his design ideology is the exploration of how two forms interact with each other: how an essentially flat fabric can wrap-around and enclose the volume of the human body. Also, how those two elements may remain distinct yet work in perfect unison.

This is a concept that transcends the practicality of his elegant aesthetic to operate on a meta-level that speaks of the interface between: our internal and exterior lives; personal and public space; the self and the other; fantasy and reality; light and shadow; the corporeal and the…