Issey Miyake

Design in Context 191 (192)
Assignment 2: Essay
Due Date: Mon June 10th, 2002

OBJECTIVE: From the exploration of this topic you should develop an enhanced appreciation of the thought, practices and processes of the designer.

Experimentation, research, innovation and change- Issey Miyake’s designs are focused on these general signs of our time. His distinctive combination of aesthetic and technological skills has resulted in a major commercial success. He has enabled fashion to go beyond more questions of colours, trends and seasons, to become a phenomenon, something not just ready to wear, but ready to take off into a different world (Holborn 1995, p.104). Issey Miyake has begun a new way of looking at clothing in which craft, aesthetics and everyday life come together. At the heart of his inventions we will see questions of life and movement, a man inspired by freedom and the coexistence of the fabric and the body.

Miyake was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1938. In 1962...