Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, whose global career spanned more than half a century, has died aged 84, an employee at his office in Tokyo told AFP on Tuesday.
“He died on the evening of August 5,” she said over the telephone, declining to be named and without giving further details of his death.
Miyake’s funeral had already taken place, with “only relatives participating” in line with his wishes, and there were no plans for a public ceremony, she said.
(FILES) This file photo taken on October 19, 1991 shows Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake acknowledging the applause from models and attendees after presenting his 1992 Spring-Summer collection in Paris. (Photo by Pierre GUILLAUD / AFP)
Public broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media reported the news of his death.Miyake was part of a wave of young Japanese designers who made their mark in Paris from the mid-1970s.
He pioneered high-tech, comfortable clothing, side-stepping the grandiosity of haute couture in favour of what he called simply “making things”.
Models present creations by Issey Miyake during the Women’s Fall-Winter 2020-2021 Ready-to-Wear collection fashion show in Paris, on March 1, 2020. (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP)
Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was just seven years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city in August 1945.
He survived the blast, which killed an estimated 140,000 people on impact and led to the end of World War II after the bombing of Nagasaki three days later.
He established the Miyake Design Studio in Tokyo in 1970, and soon afterwards opened his first Paris boutique.
By the 1980s, his career was in full swing as he experimented with materials from plastic to metal wire and even artisanal Japanese paper.
Models present creations by Japanese designer Issey Miyake during the Women’s Spring-Summer 2020 Ready-to-Wear collection fashion show, in Paris on September 27, 2019. (Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)
A model floats and dances as she presents a creation by Japanese designer Issey Miyake during the Women’s Spring-Summer 2020 Ready-to-Wear collection fashion show, in Paris on September 27, 2019. (Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)
