The recent vogue for electric lamps in the style of the old standing lanterns comes, I think, from a new awareness of the softness and warmth of paper, qualities that, for a time, we had forgotten,” novelist Junichiro Tanizaki noted in his seminal 1933 essay, “In Praise of Shadows.” Tanizaki famously compared the traditional Japanese attitude toward light and shade with modern Westernized ideas in the essay—the differences he noted remain to this day. What is Modern Photography, from A Symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, November 20, 1950." American Photography 45 (March 1951): 146–57. Moments Preserved: Eight Essays in Photographs and Words. With introduction by Alexander Liberman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. Churchward, Charles. It's Modern: The Eye and Visual Influence of Alexander Liberman. New York: Rizzoli, 2013. In 1933 the novelist Jun’ichirō Tanizaki published the essay In Praise of Shadows, in which he famously wrote ‘Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty’. It has been hailed as one of the most significant texts on Japanese aestheticism.

Since founding his studio in 1970, Miyake has created textiles, clothing, accessories and interior lines that are rooted in innovation, beauty, and a strong tradition of making. From his technologically innovative heat-pressed pleats to his garments made from single pieces of cloth, the designer has been pushing the boundaries of what fabric can be and how it relates to the body. At a time when fashion has become mere styling, Miyake has instead produced garments—from the Pleats Please to A-P OC collections—that flatter every body shape. “My clothes become part of someone, part of them physically,” Miyake once said. “Maybe I make tools. People buy the clothes and they become tools for the wearer’s creativity.” Stoppers: Photographs from My Life at Vogue. With foreword by Anna Wintour. New York: Abrams, 2016. Irving Penn Selected Photographs, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 13–August 13, 1991. Irving Penn: Diverse Worlds, Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, June 16–September 2, 2012. Traveled to: Kumu Art Museum, Talinn, Estonia, June 14–October 6, 2013. Jodidio, Philip. "No. 500 (Twenty artists and architects each contribute a recent work to the 500th issue of Connaissance des Arts)." Connaissance des Arts no. 500 (November 1993): 68–97.

Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London. The Photographer Collector's Guide, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979. People were burned, lying on top of each other, and others gathered at a stream for water. I found my mother, who was burned over half her body, the following day. I asked where she was receiving treatment and went to see her. Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, Opened May 3, 1978. Traveled to: Gallery 700, Milwaukee, WI, 1981; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 19–October 2, 2005. Before any collection makes it to Paris, everything is presented to Miyake himself at the studio’s somi (“general see”). Changes are sometimes made, but Miyake’s guiding hand is gentle and generous. “I always tell them that they don’t need me,” he says. “But I have to make sure that there is a concept with universal appeal. The work isn’t complete unless someone wears it. Also, I consider the somi a process of studying and learning – for myself. It’s crucial that the designers are establishing their own ideas.” Hall-Duncan, Nancy. The History of Fashion Photography. International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House. Rochester, 1979.

Angeletti, Norberto and Alberto Oliva. In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine. New York: Rizzoli, 2012. Irving Penn: (opens in a new window) Masterpieces by Irving Penn, Les Franciscaines, Deauville, France, March 4–May 28, 2023. Miyake and the Miyake Design Studio have always been characterized as experimenters—working either with new materials, natural or synthetic, or else mixing materials and finding ways of making them more supple, shiny, or more textured. “Fabric is like the grain in wood, you can’t go against it,” Miyake told Time magazine in 1986. “You know what I like to do sometimes? I like to close my eyes and let the fabric tell me what to do.” Holme, Bryan, Katharine Tweed, Jessica Daves, and Alexander Liberman. The World in Vogue. New York: Viking Press, 1963.At 78, Miyake is more relevant than ever, influencing a new generation of designers such as Proenza Schouler, Jonathan Anderson, and Naoki Takizawa. At the exhibition opening in Tokyo, Miyake was presented with France’s premier award, the rank of the Commander of the Legion of Honor—a fitting tribute to a revolutionary designer who continues to look to the challenges of making the world a more beautiful and sustainable place. Here, we’ve created our own tribute of sorts—a lexicon and guide to the designer’s groundbreaking work, collaborators, and innovative thinking—providing an opportunity to experience his joy of creation and hinting at greater possibilities in the future.

A model dancing in a Miyake piece in 2020. Clothes “must bestow freedom on those who wear them,” the designer once said. Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Irving Penn: New and Unseen. Process. Pace/MacGill Gallery and Pace Wildenstein Gallery. New York, 1999. Part of the autumn-winter 1980 collection, Plastic Body (above) was the first work in Miyake’s Body series—a five-year effort to leverage various traditional and modern technologies to turn clothing into a sculptural medium. Made of molded fiber-reinforced plastic, Plastic Body is mass-manufacturable, a standardized, reproducible, synthetic skin to be worn over the wearer’s own. In the book Issey Miyake: Bodyworks (Shogakukan, 1983), writer Shozo Tsurumoto conveys the conceptual importance of skin in Miyake’s designs through two photographs of naked female torsos: one of a young woman and the other of an aging one. “The seamless and taut skin surface of the young body contrasts with the wrinkled and textured surface of the aged,” writes Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada. “Skin is portrayed as a two-dimensional plane that records the process of aging, imprinting the creases made by the force of time.” — A.R. What Penn's camera leaves out is always as important as what it includes. From omitting the fashion model from an early shoot (see his first Vogue cover, 1943) to eliminating the environment for the figure, his photographs use absence to stimulate appetite. Hambourg, Maria Morris and Irving Penn. Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn’s Nudes, 1949-50 (exhibition catalogue). Boston: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Little, Brown and Co., 2002.Walsh, George, Colin Naylor and Michael Held, Eds. Contemporary Photographers, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. Penn, Irving and Diana Vreeland. Inventive Paris Clothes, 1909-1939: a Photographic Essay. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977. Holborn, Mark, Midori Kitamura, Issey Miyake and Irving Penn. Irving Penn Regards the Work of Issey Miyake: Photographs 1975-1998 (exhibition catalogue). London: Jonathan Cape, 1999.

Miyake kept the sorrows of his childhood private until 2009, and remained secretive about his personal life: his closest companions were his work collaborators, especially the studio president, Midori Kitamura, a former model. Waterfall Body, from the autumn-winter 1984 collection, is a bodice created by partially covering a knit fabric with silicon, draping it on a mannequin, and allowing it to harden in a shape that resembles flowing water. Aquatic inspirations are common in Miyake’s oeuvre—his first fragrance, created in 1992, was named L’Eau d’Issey. The obsession with water, the designer has explained, is a personal one. “You know what I love? Really love?” he once exclaimed. “Warm water and snorkel diving. That’s a dream awake— lying down in the water and watching the fish flash by.” The Vogue editors continued to give him unprecedented autonomy over his shoots, even flying him to Paris in 1949 so that he could benefit from the highbrow aesthetic of haute couture. Penn returned with what became his signature style -- carefully staged photographs of models resembling living sculpture. Lisa Fonssagrives, one of Penn's many models, married him in 1950 and two years later gave birth to a son, Tom. They remained married until her death in 1992. Penn, Irving. Irving Penn: Printemps des arts de Monte Carlo (exhibition catalogue). Paris: Beba, 1986.

One of Miyake’s most noted graphic design collaborators was the Japanese designer and art director Ikko Tanaka—known outside Japan for his famous logotypes, including the one for Muji. The two met in the 1960s and shared an enduring friendship until Tanaka’s death in 2002. Among the 640 books that Tanaka worked on was the groundbreaking volume Issey Miyake: East Meets West (Heibonsha Limited, 1978); the art director also created all the advertising for Pleats Please between 1994 and 1997. In 2016, Miyake paid tribute to his friend with the series Ikko Tanaka Issey Miyake, converting two of Tanaka’s most famous works into motifs—the 1981 poster Nihon Buyo, created for a performance of Japanese dance at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the 1995 poster The 200th Anniversary of Sharaku. Transferred onto coats and put through a pleating machine (above), Tanaka’s masterpieces—two-dimensional both in their original format and in their approach to form—acquire volume and dynamism when worn. — A.R. Irving Penn, A Career in Photography, Art Institute of Chicago, November 22, 1997–February 1, 1998.