Midori Kitamura, Kazuko Koike, Yuriko Takagi

In 1983, Japanese designer Issey Miyake told The New Yorker that he aspired “to forge ahead, to break the mold”. With the boundary-defying fashion lines that followed, he not only broke molds, but recast clothing altogether.
 
This TASCHEN Collector’s Edition, initiated and conceived by Midori Kitamura, coincided with a major exhibition at The National Art Center, Tokyo to offer an expert history of Issey Miyake design. Presented in an original MIYAKE-designed book bag, the book traces Miyake’s texture-driven originality from the earliest days of his career, when he first expressed his commitment to clothing as a field for enduring design rather than changing fashions.

Through clothes based on A Piece of Cloth concept, Body Series of the 1980s, Miyake Pleats series, and such practical, every-day designs as Pleats Please pieces, Kitamura draws on more than 40 years of collaborative work with Miyake to create an encyclopedic reference of his material and technical innovations. Stamped with Issey Miyake’s own traditional Japanese ‘inkan’, or personal seal, the monograph bears witness not only to an ongoing exploration of the relationship between a piece of cloth and the body, but also to Miyake’s singular blend of tradition, futurism, and function.
 
Photographs from Miyake’s contemporary Yuriko Takagi capture his clothes in their particular quotidien originality, including a breathtaking shoot in Iceland. In her far-reaching essay, meanwhile, leading cultural figure Kazuko Koike offers both a complete career chronology and a personal profile of Miyake to explore the ambition and inspirations that have driven his visionary work.
 
Collector’s Edition of 1,000 numbered copies, each with the Japanese seal of Issey Miyake and an original book bag conceived by Miyake’s Reality Lab.
 
The designer
Renowned clothing designer Issey Miyake studied graphic design at Tama Art University, Tokyo, before founding the Miyake Design Studio in 1970, Miyake’s creative base for all his work. In 2007, Miyake opened the design facility 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, also in Tokyo.

The editor
Midori Kitamura is president of the Miyake Design Studio and 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, working under Issey Miyake to develop collections, exhibitions, products, and publications, including Issey Miyake Pleats Please, also with TASCHEN. Kitamura directed the 2011 exhibition, Irving Penn and Issey Miyake: Visual Dialogue.

The author
Kazuko Koike is the head of MUJI’s Laboratory of Superior Items for Living and founder and former director of the Sagacho Exhibit Space in Tokyo. She has written and edited many books, including Issey Miyake East Meets West, Japanese Coloring, Japan Design, and Aura of Space.

The photographer
Yuriko Takagi was born in Tokyo and studied graphic design at Musashino Art University and fashion design in England before becoming a photographer. She specializes in images of the human body and clothing and exhibits widely. Her publications include Nus intimes (Yobisha) and In and Out of Mode (Gap Japan).