Produced | Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group
The author | Zhaoxi
Editor| Miao Zhengqing
The title image | Visual China
Issey Miyake, like the wind, passed away.
On August 5, isi Saichi Miyake, a well-known Japanese fashion designer, died of cancer at the age of 84.
Issey Miyake is known for its innovative costume designs and exhibitions, especially the Pleat collection. He has won the Black Academy Award in New York, the "Oscar of fashion" and the American Council of Fashion Designers Award, and has been named "one of the 1,000 people who created the 20th century." Together with two other well-known Japanese designers, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake completely broke the world's stereotype of Japanese and even Asian fashion.
"If it weren't for Issey Miyake, the beauty of the folds would have been smoothed out by the iron."
Issey Miyake's design is like the wind. His most amazing thing is the redefinition of the material and structure of weaving.
The documentary "Issey Miyake: Moving" presents the birth process of the "Pleated" series of ready-to-wear: in order to produce twill folds, workers put a corner of the cut fabric into a pleat machine, sandwich it between two pieces of paper, and press a uniform fold with the movement of the gears. After being fixed at a high temperature by the machine, the cloth will not deform even if it is washed. Tearing open the paper shell, the gray-blue cloth created natural folds, like ripples on the surface of the lake.
In Issey Miyake: Mobile, Issey Miyake also tells the redefinition of costume space and structure in front of the camera. "I was in Egypt, going down the Nile, to Alexandria, and there were a lot of sailboats in the river, and I looked at those sailboats and thought to myself, the wind and the sailboats. So I designed this dress. A smile appeared in his eyes, and his hands were raised above his head, signaling the stretch of the cloth rising against the wind, "When people move, this dress will unfold." ”
Screenshot of Issey Miyake: Mobile
He realized: "My job is to harmoniously integrate the fabric with the human body, with nature, with the wind. ”
Issey Miyake's design is the result of the collision of Eastern and Western aesthetics, blending the physical beauty of Parisian haute couture, the lightness and reproducibility of popular American ready-to-wear, and the Zen of oriental aesthetics. His innovation lies in the confrontation with Western design ideas, using clothing to give people the greatest freedom to resist the sense of constraint emphasizing elegance and curves. ISSEY Miyake infused Parisian fashion with an unprecedented exotic beauty that has taken the world by storm.
In issey Miyake's 1978 book The Encounter Between East and West, he wrote: "Think about raising the beauty of clothing to a philosophical level." After experiencing the highly developed modern technological and industrial development, Westerners hope to find what they dream of from the ancient Eastern civilization. ”
Around 1977, Issey Miyake was interviewed by the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, Japan. Image source: Visual China
Issey Miyake's process of creating the brand "Issey Miyake" was a creation that originated in Tokyo, withdrew from Tokyo, and reshaped Tokyo; It is a journey to look up to Paris, walk into Paris, and dream of Paris. Behind it, paris as a fashion overlord, with its complete business operation system, shapes and controls the entire fashion industry.
As Yujin Kawamura, a professor of sociology at the Fashion Institute in New York, wrote in The Japanese Wave of the Fashion World in Paris: "Fashion is not an individual aesthetic, but a social construct." ”
Leaving Tokyo
Issey Miyake was born in Japan during World War II and experienced Japan's most chaotic and decadent period. In 2009, he published an op-ed describing his memories of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:
"On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on my hometown of Hiroshima. I was 7 years old and living in Hiroshima. Whenever I close my eyes, I can still see things that no one should experience: after a bright red light, black clouds quickly rise, and people scatter in despair to flee. I can remember everything. Less than 3 years later, my mother died of nuclear exposure. ”
During Miyake's childhood, political turmoil and the resulting economic depression devastated Japan.
According to the academic paper "The Influence of the Change of Aesthetic Concepts of The Era design on Japanese Fashion Design in the 1980s", Japan, as a defeated country, promulgated frugal regulations to restrict clothing styles, fabric use and clothing details in order to quickly restore economic vitality. The number of folds and sewing stitches on the skirt is limited by a certain number, the suit is mostly single-breasted, and the previous patch bag is reduced or cancelled; In terms of color, it prefers low-key and simple colors such as gray, black, brown and gray blue; Fabrics have also shifted to affordable fabrics such as tweeds and knits, and a variety of low-cost artificial fabrics and viscose fabrics have begun to be widely used in clothing design.
In this context, Japanese youth are even more eager for the West, especially the Western fashion industry. Since the 1960s, a group of young Japanese fashion designers have studied across the ocean, including Issey Miyake.
Chanel has long since gained fame. Image source: Visual China
In 1965, he went to paris, the capital of fashion, where he entered the Paris Haute Couture Fashion Association and began working for the famous French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy.
In 1968, after experiencing the "May Storm" youth revolution in France, he realized his determination to design clothing "for the majority, not the minority", and moved to New York to work for the neatly styled, minimalist American designer Jeffrey Bini.
In East meets West, Issey Miyake writes, "We are the first generation to live on a waste heap, the first to emerge from Western culture, and must look for another aspect to search for new design methods." "Issey Miyake, who drew exquisite skills from Western clothing, began to look for a style and expression that truly belonged to him.
Most strikingly, he argues, is that what people really need is clothes that are comfortable, easy to travel, and easy to keep, rather than "hard-to-serve" clothing that needs to be maintained all day and sent to a dry cleaner frequently.
Being at ease is the consistent style of the Issey Miyake brand, even if the designer is changed. Image source: Visual China
In 1970, Issey Miyake returned to Tokyo to start his own business and founded Miyake Design Studio.
In February 1972, Issey Miyake presented the brand's new fashion collection for the first time in Tokyo, but it was not successful. It was a set of fashions made of fine cotton cloth made of judo suits, but the inferiority complex of admiring European fashion made most Japanese people unable to accept this idea derived from their own national costumes, and they ridiculed Miyake's design as a "pocket for potatoes".
Design ideas originating from the East failed to impress Tokyo. In order to gain trust and understanding, Miyake constantly held large-scale costume performances and consciously promoted his design works to Paris.
Dream of Paris
Paris is a city that fashion designers can't avoid. Behind the title of "Fashion Capital", it is not only a romance, but also a kind of power.
Kawamura Yujin wrote in "The Japanese Wave of the Paris Fashion World" that during the Louis XIV period, fashion and clothing had obvious class characteristics, and Europe respected Paris as the fashion capital, and the dignitaries and political celebrities here were the fashion vanes. In 1868, France founded the "Ladies' Ready-to-Wear and Custom Clothing Guild", an organization that has evolved all the way to become today's French Haute Couture Federation.
The French Haute Couture Federation is the absolute authority of the fashion world. This organization is responsible for setting industry norms, recruiting and promoting fashion designers, and promoting French fashion, including the annual Paris Fashion Week fashion and fashion launch.
The famous French costume designer Givenchy with his muse Audrey Hepburn. Image source: Visual China
Douban netizen Full Moon Love Reading combed through the book review: After that, Paris built a highly structured system that is difficult for non-Western designers to enter by establishing various industry associations, setting strict thresholds and levels of practice, and consolidated its fashion hegemony. Designers who have not been certified as members of the Clothing Guild, even if they are talented, will not get attention and recognition, and they do not have much commercial value.
As a result, ambitious fashion designers around the world are eager to make a big splash in Paris. Even designers, who are already famous in their own countries, want to come to Paris to be gilded and have a greater worldwide influence.
Among them, the most eye-catching performances are Japanese designers represented by Kenzo Takada, Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Hidee Mori. Zhang Jingqiong wrote in the "Outline of the History of Modern Chinese and Foreign Clothing" that at the Paris Fashion Fair in the autumn of 1982, Japanese designers and their works accounted for 1/4, causing a sensation in the world.
On March 21, 1984, Issey Miyake, designers Chantal Thomas and Kenzo Takada attended a luncheon at the French Ministry of Culture. Image source: Visual China
These Japanese designers entered the Parisian fashion system in different ways.
According to Kawamura's analysis by Yuki, Kenzo Takada's path is fully integrated into the French fashion system, proficient in mastering and taking advantage of the timing of industrial change and media exposure; Eiei Mori, a designer who is already influential in Japan, chose to win a higher honor in Paris, becoming the first Asian couture designer in the history of French haute couture, expanding her influence; The "avant-garde trio" Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, adopted a rebellious and avant-garde design concept and came to prominence in Paris.
Xu Jian said in "A Comparative Study of Hidee Nagamori, Issey Miyake, and Rei Kawakubo" that during the entrepreneurial stage of Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo in Paris, Japan ranked in the forefront of the world in terms of gold foreign exchange reserves, industrial and agricultural output value, and foreign direct investment, and had an important impact on the world economic order. The increase in Japan's economic strength and the improvement of its international status have changed the mentality of designers. In the 1970s, the rebellious movement in the field of ideas also provided an opportunity for them to introduce exotic and generous non-constructive designs.
ISSEY MIYAKE 94-95 fall/winter ready-to-wear. Image source: Visual China
Issey Miyake caused a wider and more enthusiastic reverberation in the West than in Japan. Tang Yong pointed out in "The Rise of Japanese Fashion Designers and Oriental Traditional Culture" that in the late 1980s, Paris's Textile Magazine voted among fashion shop owners and fashion writers, and Issey Miyake ranked seventh, far before Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin. Des Delandes, director of the Musée des Arts décor in Paris, called him "the greatest costume maker of our time".
Even more beautifully, Jobs became a big fan of Issey Miyake, wearing 100 identical black pullovers that Miyake had designed for his batch at every press conference and shooting.
As a result, Issey Miyake completed his journey to conquer Paris and gained national recognition in Japan.
On March 11, 1997 local time, ISSEY MIYAKE held the 97-98 Autumn/Winter Fashion Show in Paris, France. Image source: Visual China
epilogue
Fashion is a power, a social construct. Issey Miyake's experience has left us with an afterglow worth remembering.
Where is Paris next? Or do we really need Paris? To what extent has the highly solidified, rigid fashion system suppressed the talents of some designers? How long before we break the fashion system that the West has built for more than 200 years?
Solving these problems, perhaps we can be distracted, like a sailboat in the wind, close to the essence of clothing and the world.
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