Issey Miyake, the Designer of Steve Jobs' Turtleneck Sweater and Pleats Passed Away

"I am most interested in people and the human form. Clothing is the closest thing to all humans." 

Issey Miyake, a famous Japanese fashion designer, died at 84 due to liver cancer. He is mainly known for the turtleneck sweaters that he designed for Steve Jobs, one of the founders of the Apple company.  

Miyake was the discoverer of shapes, a magician who turned fabrics into artworks. He was one of the pioneers in producing pleated dresses that would never be wrinkled. Inspired by the Japanese art of Origami, he designed the dresses for the first time in the 1980s, which were then categorized as a collection named "Pleats, Please." Miyake was the first Japanese fashion designer to enter Paris, the cradle of world fashion, and work alongside well-known French designers like Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy. Throughout his 50 years of professional life, he repeatedly experimented with traditional and modern techniques and their combination while being inspired by different cultures, social roles, and materials from daily life, such as plastic, wood, paper, foil, horsehair, and other stuff which made his designs more like sculptures rather than clothes to wear.  

The loose shirts and pants he designed did not belong to a particular social class; they could be seen anywhere, from the clothes for Sony company workers to formal dresses for special ceremonies. Honoring the human body regardless of race, gender, size, or age was at the core of his designs. Unlike most fashion designers, he was not interested in fashion trends, so he always considered himself a clothes designer and not a "fashion designer."

It is obvious today that works by fashion designers are featured on the cover of famous magazines and art spaces like museums and fashion shows. However, when Miyake started working, achieving such positions was quite unexpected. He always insisted that designing clothes is a form of design art. Eventually, in 1982, one of his designs was featured on the cover of Artforum, one of the most important international magazines about contemporary art, thus bringing his designs into the art world.  

Like Andy Warhol, the American artist, Miyake was very interested in combining art, architecture, design, and fashion. Warhol described Miyake's designs as "East meets West and I like that because I've always liked circles more than squares." 

In 2010 Miyake received Japan's highest honor for the arts, the Order of Culture, for creating a global brand and introducing the country's fashion industry to the world.  

Sources: 

• www.artnews.com/art-news/news/issey-miyake-dead-1234636155

• www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/fashion/issey-miyake-dead.html 

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• www.nytimes.com