Issey Miyake: Japanese fashion designer best known for producing turtlenecks for Steve Jobs dies at 84 | World News
Local media reported that Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake has passed away at the age of 84.
Kyodo news agency reported that Miyake died of liver cancer last Friday.
Best known for producing the signature black turtleneck shirt of his friend and Apple founder Steve Jobs, Miyake is said to have wanted to be a dancer or an athlete.
However, reading his sister’s fashion magazines prompted him to change course.
Image of Steve Jobs wearing a turtleneck during the launch of the new iPad in January 2010
He became known for his designs that combined advanced silhouettes and pleated fabrics in a career that spanned more than half a century.
Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was 7 years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city in August 1945, during World War II.
He was in a school classroom at the time and survived the bombing.
Miyake was reluctant to talk about this event until later in life.
In an article in the New York Times in July 2009, as part of a campaign to invite then-US President Barack Obama to visit the city, he wrote: “When I close my eyes, I still see things that no one else can experience: a bright red light, dark clouds soon after, people running in all directions trying desperately to get out – I remember them all.
“Within three years, my mother died of radiation.”
Designer Satoshi Kondo’s creations in his fall/winter 2020/21 women’s ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Issey Miyake during Paris Fashion Week in March 2020
Since his experiences that day, he said he likes to “think of things that can be created, not destroyed and bring beauty and joy”.
“I focus on clothing design, in part because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic,” he said.
He said he did not want to be labeled “a designer who survived the atomic bomb”.
Miyake studied graphic design at a Tokyo art university and went on to study clothing design in Paris, where he worked with renowned fashion designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, before moving to New York.
He returned to Tokyo in 1970 and founded the Miyake Design Studio.
His creations expanded to include handbags, watches and perfumes before essentially retiring in 1997 to devote himself to research.
