Legendary Japanese Fashion Designer Issey Miyake Dies at 84

Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, whose inventive and prescient haute couture designs made him a global fashion icon, has died of liver cancer, CNN reported on Tuesday. A private funeral service was held.

Miyake built a renowned fashion empire from his inventive, technology-driven designs featuring bold fabric sculpting. From extravagant embroidered dresses to prêt-à-porter, the scope of his work included designing Steve Jobs iconic look — producing a hundred custom black turtlenecks to hang in the Apple founder’s closet.

“Miyake broke the boundaries between East and West and pursued the body, the fabric covering it and a comfortable relationship between the two as a fundamental concept, both shocking and resonating with people the world over,” the company bearing his name said on its website.

In his youth, Miyake admired the work of respected Japanese designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi’s whimsical designs were said to have inspired Miyake’s own often playfully avant-garde clothing. While Miyake frequently experimented with modern materials and techniques, his couture drew on the elegance of Western fashion’s past melded with rich cultural references to Japan — from Japanese embroidery techniques to tattoo designs.

Rising to fame in the 1980s, Miyake’s exquisitely engineered designs immediately became collector’s items for the fashion elite. Tirelessly inventive, Miyake became known for his intricately pleated clothing that he created with a process he invented, and led to his influencial “Pleats, Please“ line. His fashions have been preserved by museums around the world.

Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was 7 years old when the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred during World War II, Aug. 6, 1945. He was reluctant to discuss the experience throughout his life. The man-made cataclysm affected the designer’s leg and his mother died of radiation exposure three years after the incident. Miyake finally spoke publicly about his experiences in a 2009 New York Times op-ed, inspired by President Barack Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament.

Miyake’s interest in fashion is said to have been piqued by thumbing through his sister’s fashion magazines. After studying graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, he enrolled in fashion school in Paris. There, the young designer worked with French fashion legends Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy.

His next role took him to New York as assistant to Geoffrey Beene. The designer returned to Tokyo in 1970, where he founded the Miyake Design Studio. In 1971, the first Issey Miyake collection launched in New York.

Miyake’s designs and fashion won him scores of prestigious awards during his lifetime, including the awarding of the French Legion of Honor. He became the first fashion designer to receive the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for lifetime achievement.

In 1999, Miyake turned over Miyake Design Studio’s creative duties to Naoki Takizawa, now design director for special projects at Uniqlo. Satoshi Kondo took over as design director for the brand in 2020, reports ABC News.