Issey Miyake: catching up with the man who pushes the envelope of fashion - Crossing, Boundaries - Interview

Interview, Nov, 2001 by Ingrid Sischy

INGRID SISCHY: Issey, why did you want to become a fashion designer?

ISSEY MIYAKE: When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a dancer. I was interested in the way the body can express itself. Later I told people I was interested in graphic design and in becoming an artist, but that was mostly because that's what they expected me to want to do. However, I always thought fashion design was wonderful. After growing up in Hiroshima, I went to university and would get magazines from America with photographs by people like Avedon and Hiro or saw art by people like Andy Warhol. It had such power for me. I felt, through the images I saw in magazines, that clothing could be like beautiful architecture for the body. I was a graphic design student in Tokyo at the time and I was amazed at how architecture and other design fields completely ignored fashion design. It made me think that there was probably something to do there.

IS: When you were younger, were you conscious that something had to change in fashion? Did things seem too formal to you [in Japan]?

IM: That feeling started for me when I was in university and would go to parties. When it was time for me to get a job I said to myself the only place that I can work is in the couture [houses] in Paris.

IM: No, I'm someone who doesn't much understand stiff things. I like softness, things that are cottony. I like touching everything all the time. But I'm sure that I'm influenced by many sculptors, like Brancusi and Giacometti. Later when I came to New York, I got to know great artists, men like Christo and Robert Rauschenberg. They showed me another way to see, they lent me a lot of eyes. I'm covered with their eyes.

IS: Do you think that if you had grown up somewhere else, like New York City, you would have ended up doing something else, like being a sculptor?

IS: In that moment when you decided to go to Paris was it because you felt you needed to learn things about fashion that you could only learn there? Was it because you felt you needed that experience in order to survive in the field? Or was it perhaps just to get away? Because that decision changed everything.

IM: It was because I was thinking that my ultimate destination would eventually be New York. I wasn't sure I wanted to be a dress designer, but I knew I wanted to come to New York and do something new, something that only I could do. Studying in Japan just wasn't enough. I felt that to survive in the artistic field, New York was the only place to be.

IS: How did you get that feeling?

IM: Through magazines. At that time, I think magazines were much more inspiring to us visually than most of them are now. I had no money back then, so I'd always go to the public ad agency to see the latest magazines--I knew exactly when they'd arrive. I'd call repeatedly saying, "Did you get it?" and then I'd go to the office and it would be there as if by magic. It was emotional for me. And I thought, Designing clothes could be even more emotional.

IS: Tell me more about that.

IM: There's something very intimate about designing clothes. People have such individual and personal reactions to an article of clothing: "Oh, it's not for me" or "It is for me" or It's so avant-garde." They always see things from the point of view not just of their own bodies, but as a reflection of how they live, as well.

IS: So take us back to that decision to go to work in Paris. You worked for Givenchy, didn't you? Can you remember your job interview with him?

IM: That's the funny thing--it was in May 1968.

IS: What timing! That's exactly when the student riots happened at the Sorbonne, right?

IM: Yes. I went to the Sorbonne and the Place de l'Odeon to hear what they were saying, but most of it I didn't understand. It was still exciting. I had been working briefly at Guy Laroche and I was thinking I needed to change my profession, to try something else. I had a friend at the time, a Japanese girl who was a model for Givenchy, and I remember meeting her for lunch at a restaurant and she suggested I come to work at Givenchy. Next day she had it all arranged. All Mr. Givenchy said to me was that I had to stay more than one year, because you can't learn anything in less than that. It was very kind of him.

IS: What were your duties?

IM: I worked as a sketcher, doing all the drawings--I did about 50 to 100 a day. Then I had to do sketches in colors to send to people like the Duchess of Windsor and Audrey Hepburn. I learned a lot from watching him fit the clothes on the models--I could see the technique in his work. It was a great school. He was the best. He had a beautiful way of working in a very traditional way, and he was very sincere to work with, full of ethics and style, everything. But once I was there I began to think I couldn't be a designer, that I should do something completely different.

IS: Why?

IM: Because I didn't want to belong to that kind of world and society. I saw that this was not my world. They were all nice people, beautiful, but different. It just wasn't for me.