Issey Miyake, Japanese Fashion Designer Icon Has Died Aged 84

The Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, renowned for his innovative pleated clothing and for producing 100 mock turtlenecks for the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, has died of liver cancer in a hospital in Tokyo. He was 84.

                           Issey Miyake Clothing Design

The Issey Miyake Group released a short statement about his work saying: “Miyake’s dynamic spirit was driven by a relentless curiosity and desire to convey joy through the medium of design.” It stated that “as per Mr Miyake’s wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service.”

                         Miyake's Clothing Design 

Throughout his 52-year career, the designer maintained an “anti-trend” stance, always referring to his designs as “clothing” rather than “fashion”.

“I am most interested in people and the human form,” Miyake told the New York Times in 2014. “Clothing is the closest thing to all humans.”

Perhaps best known for designing the polyester-cotton mock turtlenecks indelibly linked with Steve Jobs, it is believed he produced 100 at less than $200 each. Designed to alleviate “decision fatigue”, along with Jobs’ Levi’s 501s and New Balance 991s, the tops became shorthand for late 90s Silicon Valley uniform, based on the idea that busy people’s minds are on more important things than picking out ties.

Miyake defined an era in Japan’s modern history, reaching stardom in the 1970s among a generation of designers and artists who reached global fame by defining a Japanese vision that was unique from the West.

Culled; The Guardian

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