Why I’m not writing about “Issey Miyake and the Twelve Black Girls”

There is so much more to celebrate about this astute designer. Frankly speaking the 1976 “Issey Miyake and Twelve Black Girls” fashion show in Tokyo/Osaka (one of the models being Grace Jones) has gone down in 20^th Century history as an Iconic moment, I’m proud of that. Let’s not forget this was near enough in the early days of this remarkable designer’s studio. History has been written and let no one erase it. The show must go on and it sure did for Spring Summer 2012. We were presented with the first collection by the new creative director Yoshiyuki Muyamae. Autumn Winter 2011 saw the departure of Dai Fujiwara after 5 years as Creative Director of the Japanese brand.  

This spring summer’s collection was however met with a mixed review. Issa Miyake is well known for how he brings the ideas of fashion and architecture closer together. His clothes dance around a women’s body slightly as cobwebs and creates something like pupation in an insect. They can transform the body with bizarre additions or sheath in a bulky mask of fabric. Miyake’s ultra-fine, delicate architectural pleating is just one of his attempts to provide the wearer with new elements of creativity. John Forsythe, with whom Miyake designed a number of dance productions, notes with astonishment that the designs from the Pleats Please Issey Miyake Line create an echo in harmony with the body rhythms.

Issa Miyake demonstrates how he brings the ideas of fashion and architecture closer together. Miyake takes the colours and shapes of shells, algae, and stones as his inspiration and uses modern technology to transform silk, cotton, paper, bamboo, and plastic into new surprising materials. The results are hooded coats made from densely woven, synthetic fibres which replicate the structure of paper, dresses made from mosquito nets., hats made from Bromelia-fibre gauze, shell shaped pullovers made from fishing line encased in cotton, oil impregnated coats made from the handmade Japanese paper abura jami (traditionally only used for umbrellas), and silicon bodices from pants made from polyurethane-coated polyester jersey.

This Spring Summer collection for Issey Miyake didn’t have the usual concept. This may be because Yoshiyuki Miyamae wanted to create something unique, that we have never seen before from Miyake with his debut collection. I very much liked the theme which was portrayed clearly in the designs, how well it worked for everyone is objective. The collection also had amongst other things extra ordinary tribal patterned leggings that looked like paint. Whatever technology Miyamae used definitely worked.

Some extracts of this article are derived from Icons of the 20^th Century Book by Gerda Buxbaum

Collection Theme

“Bloom skin detailed the life of a flower, bud, stem, petal, blossom, bloom – as a metaphor for a Woman”

 

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