No wonder Issey Miyake was Steve Jobs’ favorite designer.
The man behind the plainclothes of Mr. Jobs, who died on August 5 at the age of 84, was a pioneer in every way. He was the first designer to collaborate with an artist and advocated the term ‘comfortable’ long before it existed. But what sets Miyake apart is his understanding and appreciation of technology, and how it can be applied aesthetically to create new and compelling utilities.
Before wearables, before connected jackets, before 3D-printed sneakers and laser-cut laces, there was Miyake pushing the boundaries of material innovation connecting the past with the future. He was fashion tech’s first champion.
In 1988, Miyake researched the heat press, how to press fabric twice or three times its normal size between two sheets of paper and feed it into an industrial machine to make clothes. It started with It was shaped into knife-edge pleats, which became garments that never wrinkled, flattened, or required complicated fastenings.By 1994, these garments were , Please pleat (later spun into a menswear version of Homme Plissé): Mario Fortuny’s classic Greek drapes redesigned into something practical and weirdly fun.
The next experiment was to feed a continuous thread into an industrial knitting machine to create a piece of fabric with stitches that trace the shapes of different garments. manufacturing detritus.known as A-POC This collection was launched in 1997. This was decades before ‘zero waste’ became the clear call of the responsible fashion movement.
and there was 132 5Miyaki made his debut in 2010 (he remained involved with his brand after stepping away from his day-to-day responsibilities). Inspired by the work of computer scientist Jun Mitani, the piece uses intricate origami folds to construct flat-pack items that open to create three-dimensional pieces on the body. The collection was developed in collaboration with Miyaki’s in-house R&D team known as his Reality Lab, founded in 2007. (This name is not to be confused with his Reality Labs division of Meta, perhaps its predecessor, but was later used for retail stores in Tokyo as well.)
Works from all these lines are now included in museum collections such as museums. Metropolitan Museum of Art, modern art museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtThey are extraordinary, soft sculptures that morph and move with the body, but what makes them singular is that they are not just beautiful objects, but solutions to everyday needs. It is conceived (Miyake’s core value was the importance of “clothes for living”)…and they worked that way.
That’s where the black turtleneck comes in. It wasn’t Miyake’s most interesting outfit. It may have been his most mundane. But it embodies his founding philosophy and serves as a doorway for those not particularly interested in fashion to discover Miyake’s world. Mr. Jobs did just that.
In fact, it is no coincidence that Jobs himself came into contact with Miyake through technology. Or so the late Apple founder told his biographer Walter Isaacson.
according to Mr. Isaacson’s book, “Steve Jobs,” Mr. Jobs was fascinated by the uniform jacket Mr. Miyake created for Sony employees in 1981. It was made from ripstop nylon with no lapels and included sleeves that could be unzipped to turn the jacket into a vest. , asked Mr. Miyake to create a similar style for Apple employees. he said to Mr. Isaacson.
Still, according to Isaacson’s book, the two became friends, and Jobs often visited Miyake, eventually making Miyake’s black mock turtleneck an integral part of his uniform. adopted. By removing the unnecessary creases around the neck, this piece combines the lightness of a T-shirt or sweatshirt with the cool and minimal lines of a jacket.
Jobs, who wore them until his death in 2011, said in the book that Miyake made him “like 100.” (Mr. Isaacson wrote that he saw them piled up in Mr. Jobs’s closet, and the cover of the book features a portrait of Mr. Jobs.)
More than Levi’s 501s and New Balance shoes, turtlenecks have become synonymous with the blend of Jobs’ genius and his focus. to concentrate on his work.It was an approach to dress later adopted by advocates such as Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama. Also his ability to blend the elegance and practicality of soft corners not only in his own style, but also in the style of his products.
As Ryan Tate wrote Gawkerturtlenecks “helped make him the most famous CEO in the world” Troy Patterson bloomberg It was called the ‘monk’s robe’. It was so ingrained in his pop culture that Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes continued to spread his Jobs-like brilliance to the world, even though Miyake’s brand retired the style in 2011 after Jobs’ death. and later adopted it. (The updated version is Reappeared in 2017 as “semi-dull T”)
It didn’t matter. After all, before Jobs met Miyake, the black turtleneck was largely beatnik and Samuel Beckett territory, with clove cigarettes, downtown, and poetry. It was associated with recitation (ninjas, cat thieves, and those who want to blend into the night). Then it meant a paradigm shift.
But without Mr. Miyake, it wouldn’t be possible. Mr. Jobs was not the typical muse of fashion clichés. But more than the architects and artists drawn to Miyake’s clothes, he has become a designer’s ambassador to history. Not just a tenuous inner sanctuary of design, but a truly popular piece of heritage that has helped shape the very nature of how we think. About clothes.
