Issey Miyake: Making Things
During the winter of 1998, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art hosted an exhibition that summarized Issey Miyake’s work over the 10 years prior. Though the exhibition only ran for five months, the Cartier Foundation memorialized it in an all-embracing book that allows its readers to navigate Miyake’s mind in its rawest form.
Issey Miyake’s work has always posed fundamental questions about the nature of clothing, questions of life, and movement, questions which are only answered by personally exploring Miyake’s work. The book explores a unique way of looking at clothing, in which design, beauty, and everyday life come together.
Miyake firmly believes that beauty is indissociable from form and function. His one aim was to create clothes that anyone can wear, clothes that are beyond the reach of time. The book captures these moments and highlights some of Issey Miyake’s greatest feats such as his collaborations with Irving Penn, William Forsythe, and the Frankfurt ballet, the manufacturing process behind Pleats Please, and a deep dive behind A Piece of Cloth.
It is a bit bitter-sweet that Issey Miyake’s Making things was published the same year he decided to step down from his eponymous label. Though no longer running his namesake brand, there is no denying the impact Issey Miyake has had on defining function and design.