Issey Miyake:Photo Irving Penn

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Born in 1938, Miyake grew up in a Japan devastated by WWII, and his world was subsequently shaped by the clash of eastern and western cultures. After moving to Paris in 1965, he studied at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture – working at Guy Laroche and Givenchy (and a short stint in New York at Geoffrey Beene) – before forming his own studio in 1970. Endlessly fascinated by the space between the human body and the clothes that encase it, Miyake frequently experimented with new fabrics and silhouettes – folding clothes in an origami-like style, or extending them far beyond the confines of the body. He has been researching the material and had been sent this particular paper, which was woven by hand by a craftswoman in Shiraishi in the Miyagi prefecture in the north of Japan. “She sent it to me to archive,” he tells me when we spoke after the press conference. He was keen to chat despite the fact that there was a crowd gathering in the entrance to the museum to hear him officially open the exhibition. One of his brightly coloured flying saucer dresses hovered above them as they waited, suspended from the ceiling.

Despite the fact Miyake never attended the photo sessions by Penn (nor did Penn ever go to any of Miyake’s shows) – there is an incredible visual conversation that arose between the two artists due to the complete artistic freedom afforded to Penn. The sculptural quality of Miyake’s work is boldly captured in his images – a furrow of pleats transforms a woman into an elegant slinky, or a coat is inflated like an oversize balloon. In fact, Penn noted in the introduction to his 1988 monograph, Issey Miyake: Photographs By Irving Penn: “His designs are not fashionable, but women of style are enriched by them and are made more beautiful by them.” As a child, Miyake wanted to be an athlete. One of the exhibits in the show is the official uniform he designed for the newly independent Lithuanian team for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Linked with his love of sport, Miyake’s clothes have always allowed freedom of movement, and his shows highlight their flexibility (and often bounce-ability).He’s always been a free spirit with his own way of working – at his own pace. “It’s different from the collections that happen every six months. Tradition takes time, but that’s something I am very interested in now.” To look at the photographs is to see how Penn essentializes Miyake’s designs, bestowing them with a graphic clarity and a highly dynamic sense of how they can be worn. Tradition is very important to Miyake. It is the fusion of the most basic of materials and ancient of traditions with new and innovative techniques that has kept his brand at the forefront of fashion – technically if not always critically – for the past four and a half decades. One of his biggest fans was the late Zaha Hadid, who loved wearing his clothes. The designer, known for his signature heat-pressed pleating technique, saw fashion as inherently optimistic and clothing as ‘like beautiful architecture for the body’ The pair met in Tokyo over dinner, after an introduction by a mutual friend, the publisher Nicholas Callaway. In 1986 Penn started to shoot Miyake’s seasonal collections in New York, resulting in advertising campaigns, exhibitions, and publications. But these outputs were not the principal intention; they were the mere fruits of a long-distance creative exchange between the two.

Miyake went on to New York in 1969 as an assistant for Geoffrey Beene, to learn about mass production. But in 1970, another bout of radiation-related disease returned him to Tokyo for treatment, where friends loaned him the money to start Miyake Design Studio. In his remarkable first show in Tokyo, a model stripped off many layers until nude, a scandal that alarmed his sponsors and made clear his originality.Miyake never expected to reach old age. He was born in Hiroshima, the son of an army officer and a teacher, and evacuated to a nearby small town during the second world war. At 8.15am on 6 August 1945, he was at primary school when he saw the flash of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Seven-year-old Miyake set out alone for the family house, 2.3km from the blast centre, searching among the heaped dead and dying for his mother. At the exhibition opening Miyake was presented with the cross of the Commander of the Légion d’honneur (an award he shares with Karl Lagerfeld who was given it in 2010). He didn’t come out to the celebration dinner, preferring a quiet night in. But I heard he wore his medal for the rest of the night, no doubt dreaming of his next challenge, how to make the world a better place using that most fundamental of materials, paper. Growing up just outside Hiroshima, Issey Miyake witnessed the atomic bomb explosion in 1945 in his city, aged 7. His mother died three years later, after being badly burned, and he suffered from radiation-related diseases. Photograph: Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters Issey Miyake, Fall/Winter 1999/2000, Paris, 1999. Courtesy: AFP and Getty Images; photographer: Pierre Verdy