Issey Miyake is the most well-known Japanese designer in the world, having successfully merged East and West in his designs.
Background
Issey Miyake is a Japanese fashion designer born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1938. He studied graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo and graduated in 1965. He went straight to Paris after his studies, where he trained at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture (French regulator of Haute Couture fashion houses) before taking apprenticeships with Givenchy and Guy Laroche. Issey Miyake founded the Miyake Design Studio in 1970, which was seen as an experimental laboratory for Japanese fashion.
Education
He studied at the Tama Art University in Tokyo during which time he assembled his first fashion collection, which he named "The Poem of Material and Stone" In 1964 he graduated from the University of Tokyo. In 1965 he moved to Paris to study design at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. In 1966 he left to work as an assistant designer at Guy Laroche. He also worked in the studio of another great couturier Hubert de Givenchy. However, he felt out of step with the posed formality of the haute couture approach to dressing which was all that Paris could offer to women at that time. However, revolution was in the air, and such designers as Courreges and Cardin were designing modern clothes.
Career
In 1986 he met Irving Penn who photographed Issey Miyake’s advertising campaigns over the next 13 years, producing over 250 frames that were later complied into seven volumes of the label's photographic history. Miyake opened his first store in Paris on the Place des Vosges, moving to boulevard Saint Germain in 1990. In 1993 he launched his Pleats Please collection of garments made from polyester jersey memory-holding fabric, using a pioneering technique to pleat the clothes so that they retain their form no matter how the wearer moves. As a designer and technological innovator, Issey Miyake launched APOC in 1998 with the help of his assistant Dai Fujiwara. APOC, an acronym of “A Piece of Cloth” and “Another Possibility of Creation”, was a revolutionary couture concept whereby clothes could be customized by the wearer, using fabric cut-outs.