Introduction: The Architect of Movement
In the second half of the 20th century, the world of fashion looked like a glittering showcase. Paris dictated silhouettes, New York sold practicality, Milan celebrated glamour. And then, on the horizon, a voice emerged from Japan - quiet yet assured, radical in its simplicity. It was Issey Miyake, who refused to conform to the existing system and instead created his own language of fashion. For him, fabric was not just material but an empty canvas for space, movement, and time.
Childhood in a World of Ruins
Miyake was born in Hiroshima and, as a child, witnessed what no one in the world should ever see - the explosion of the atomic bomb. His body and memory carried the trauma, yet he chose not the path of destruction but the path of creation. He often said he wanted to speak about life, not death. Perhaps that is why his clothes are filled with light, space, and freedom: garments that offered a vision of the future after catastrophe.
Technology as Poetry
Miyake was one of the first designers to seriously experiment with new materials - polyester, metallic fibers, heat treatments. In his hands, technology became poetry.
Pleats Please - Pleats That Remember Movement
Traditionally, pleating was merely a decorative technique. Miyake transformed it into philosophy. He developed a method where the garment was first constructed and only then pleated through heat processing. This meant the pleats became part of the garment’s very structure, encoding movement into the fabric itself.
The philosophy behind this technology: clothing that does not restrict but amplifies the body. Pleats Please moves, unfolds, responds to every gesture. It is not merely an aesthetic - it is an affirmation of human freedom in space.
A-POC - Clothing From a Single Piece
In the late 1990s, Miyake, together with designer Dai Fujiwara, introduced the concept of A-POC (A Piece of Cloth). Using computer programming and industrial knitting machines, they created a seamless tube of fabric from which one could “cut out” ready-made garments.
This was a revolution not only technological but also philosophical:
• Zero waste - not a single scrap discarded.
• Democracy of design - the wearer could decide what shape to carve out.
• Unity of human and material - clothing not as a mass-produced object but as a personal dialogue with fabric.
A-POC became a kind of utopia: clothing as pure possibility, where form emerges directly from interaction with the wearer.
The Japanese Code in a Global World
Miyake always carried Japan within him.
His work resonates with Zen philosophy of emptiness - garments that seem made of air, never weighing down the body. The ornament of origami - folds transforming fabric into architecture. Wabi-sabi - the echo of imperfect and natural beauty.
At the same time, he thought globally. Miyake understood that the world was moving toward multiculturalism, and his clothing became a kind of “translator” between cultures. In Paris, his collections were called “architectural poems.” In New York, they were worn by artists and musicians. In Japan, he embodied a new national voice.
Conclusion
Miyake left us with the sense that the future can be soft, flexible, and profoundly human. He transformed fashion into an avant-garde architecture of life - and in doing so, he taught the world to see fabric not merely as matter, but as a way of being.
