Miyake Modern - Japanese designer Issey Miyake - Interview

Art in America, Feb, 1999 by Joan Simon

JS: You had another solo exhibition in 1988, in Paris, at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Isamu Noguchi wrote a preface for it.

IM: It was a good time and at the same time a terrible time--to find what I'd done, and to find where I should go. Ten years after that, I'm here.

Talking Business

JS: You are known for close collaboration with people in your own company, and many of your team have worked together for almost 30 years, among them your business partner Tomoko Komuru and your chief textile designer, Makiko Minagawa. Both women have been crucial parts of your team from the outset. Is this unusual in the field?

IM: I don't know. I think our work is achieved with each one having something to do. Someone said to me, "You work like the Bauhaus." I don't think so. I feel closer to people like Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray. We work together, but--more than that--we are independent. I start with making fabric--we work from the yarn, to find, to invent. We can keep very close to the work. The great thing about Japanese designers is that we have our own companies. We don't do licensing. We are not controlled by someone else. We are on our own.

JS: How do sales compare in different countries?

IM: We are not a big company. We sell in New York, London, Paris, and a few other places. Eighty percent of the clothing is sold in Japan.

JS: Do you put different designs in different parts of the world, depending on the milieu?

IM: We send what they buy. We don't make decisions for them. It depends on the buyers. You can go in the shops in the different countries and see some different things.

IM: Do you ever put back into production a design you made, say, in '92 or '87 ... or ... '74?

IM: Never the same, but the way I work, it's by adjustment--there's always some continuation. Many people come to me and say, "Why don't you do that one again? I've worn it out." That means it's good. And I think, why not? But if I put them into production again--it's with new fabric. These clothes are called "Permanente."

JS: Warhol talked of being a "business artist" and he said he wanted to finish as one. While you don't describe yourself as an artist or your business that way--to be able to keep making your clothes, you've also had to keep your business going. It's a complicated and significant accomplishment in a very changeable field.

IM: I think that designers, especially Japanese designers, have to have their own companies, their own boutiques. I think it is the way people can have freedom. It's a good solution.

Miyake and Japanese Tradition

What is Japanese in Miyake's work, and why has its "Eastern" component been so well received in the West? The designer understands and appreciates the strengths of Japan's traditions, and is equally aware of how and when to translate that knowledge beyond Japan' borders. The pervasiveness of indigo, for instance, in traditional Japanese folk dress and textiles served as an influence in Miyake's earliest clothing collections. The blue of our ubiquitous blue jeans was originally derived from the same dye source.