Miyake Modern - Japanese designer Issey Miyake - Interview

Art in America, Feb, 1999 by Joan Simon

JS: The next gallery in "The Laboratory" shows the result of a process that is a bit harder to understand. The "Prism Collage Method" shows a white felt fabric on the wall with layers of filmy colored fabrics superimposed on its surface, while the finished coat [Prism Collage, Autumn/Winter 1997] has a surface with colors that seem embedded, in appearance not unlike a Helen Frankenthaler or Morris Louis stain painting. Yet it wasn't done with stain, or a dye, but with needles.

IM: That is an idea of the future. It's something we can reuse. We have plenty of fabrics that we can layer and use again. If you have this and this [pointing to JS's scarf and sweater]--I can put it together, and it becomes another story. It's not a printing effect, it's hundreds of needles punching them together.

JS: You don't see the needle marks.

IM: No, they're so small.

JS: Like microsurgery.

IM: We can also cut by heat--heat punch. And we also can cut by cold--extreme cold. When you cut with heat, it makes a mark. With cold, no mark. It depends on the fabric.

JS: What about the "Shrinking Method"?

IM: It begins with kibira, a natural fiber, not an expensive material. People use it for the covers of cushions. To use it for clothing, it's important to make it softer, stronger. The "Shrinking Method" begins with huge clothes made of kibira that become 2 1/2 times smaller.

JS: Last summer, you showed a huge white jacket with a red cross on it in the window of your New York store.

IM: That I call Marilyn Monroe. Do you remember that Marilyn Monroe was photographed by Bert Stern? She made crosses on the contact sheets in red grease-pencil when she didn't want Stern to use the photograph. So that's the red cross mark on the big white clothes. And that's also the tape that blocks off the part of the fabric that should not shrink when the clothing is put into the liquid. That's what holds the form. The other parts shrink, and the part with the tape stays the same. By the way, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14.

JS: Thank goodness. [Laughter.]

JS: The last room downstairs, "Starburst," is in many ways still an idea in process.

IM: Yes.

JS: With its floating foil sheets covering the walls, it looks like the type of room-sized art installation we've come to know in the past 30 years, beginning with Warhol's silvered Factory. Within those suspended silver, bronze or gold sheets are items of clothing, heat-pressed and sealed between the thin membranes of metallic paper. When the items are released from the foil matrix, and worn, the pressure of the body causes the foil to crack and stretch, so that the underlying, original garment bursts through and is seen amid the accidental metallic streaks. First of all, would l bring my own clothes to this process, or would it be your clothes that would be used there?

IM: It could be anything. The idea is for reuse. We included chefs hats. Blue jeans. The idea is you can put in anything.

JS: Is this a process or a product that you are bringing to the public?

IM: This is for people to finish.