Miyake was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1938. He established the Miyake
Design Studio in 1970 and started to show his line at the Paris Collections
in 1973. Miyake's basic tenets for making clothes has always been the idea
of creating a garment from 'one piece of cloth', and the exploration of the
space between the human body and the cloth that covers it. His approach to
design has always been to strike a consistent balance between tradition and
innovation, handcrafts and new technology.
PLEATS PLEASE, which was born in1993, is a radical but eminently practical and universal form of contemporary clothing that combines technology, functionality and beauty. PLEATS PLEASE is exhibited at the Pompidou Center, Paris as the firstexample of clothing design, currently on view as part of an exhibitionentitled: BIG BANG: Destruction et Creation dans l'art du XX Siecle show.
In 1998, Miyake embarked upon a new project called A-POC (A Piece of Cloth)
with Dai Fujiwara and a team of young designers. He is challenging the way
in which clothing is made using new process that harnesses computer technology to industrial knitting or weaving machines to create clothing beginning with a single piece of thread. Miyake established the Miyake Issey Foundation with the authorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, in February of 2004.
