I had never held a piece by Issey Miyake before the tail end of a trip back home to Japan in 2019, when I wandered into the Pleats Please boutique in the Narita International Airport before my flight.
Candy-colored clothes hung like streaks of paint against the perfectly white laminated walls. Store attendees patiently strolled about as travelers with luggage fumbled with scarves, jostled hangers, and cocked their heads sideways, assessing how to wear the seemingly shapeless garments.
The way movement is such an integral element in Pleats Please by Issey Miyake is so satisfying and delivers such a sensuous experience pic.twitter.com/0rlCpoG9VW— mar (@vogueheroine) July 17, 2020
The two-dimensional flatness of the garments is in line with how Miyake conceived of clothing, art, and technology. The trailblazing designer from Hiroshima died on August 5th, at the age of 84, and left behind a body of work known for being as innovative as it was wearable — with the person in the clothing being central to the design.
“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.”
Among the tech crowd, Miyake is perhaps remembered most for designing the iconic black mock necks worn religiously by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. As the story goes, Jobs was visiting the Sony headquarters in the 1980s and was struck by the matching work jackets worn by every employee and designed by Miyake. Jobs’ attempts to pitch a uniform to Apple employees flopped, according to his biography. But he kept his own consistent outfit, with Miyake supplying hundreds o …