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March 29, 2024

No wonder Issey Miyake was Steve Jobs’ favorite designer.

Jobs in a black turtleneck, who died on August 5 at the age of 84, was a pioneer in every way – the first foreign designer to be shown at Paris Fashion Week (April 1974), including The first designers and proponents to collaborate with artists long before the term “dress comfortably” came into existence. But it is his understanding and appreciation of technology and how to apply it aesthetically to create new, enticing practical tools that set Mr. Miyake apart.

Before wearables, before connected jackets, before 3D printed sneakers and laser cut lace, there was Mr. Miyake who pushed the boundaries of material innovation, connecting the past and the future. He was the original champion of fashion technology.

Beginning in 1988, Mr. Miyake’s research into heat presses and how to use them to make garments, which are initially two to three times larger than normal fabrics, is then pressed and fed between two sheets of paper Industrial machines shape it into knife-edge pleats, which in turn become garments that won’t wrinkle, collapse, or require any complex fasteners.By 1994, these garments formed their own collection, known as pleated please (later morphed into a men’s version, Homme Plissé): Reimagines Mario Fortuny’s classic Greek curtains into something that is as functional as it is fun.

Here’s how it went: An experiment was next carried out in which a continuous thread was fed into an industrial knitting machine to create a piece of fabric with a built-in seam that traced different garment shapes— This in turn allows for tailoring to the wearer’s needs, eliminating manufacturing debris.is called A-POC (a piece of cloth), the collection launched in 1997, decades before zero waste became the clarion call for the responsible fashion movement.

then there is 132 5, Mr. Miyaki made his debut in 2010 (after he stepped down from day-to-day duties but remained involved with his brand). Inspired by the work of computer scientist Jun Mitani, it consists of intricate origami folded flat-packed objects that pop open to create 3D parts on the body. The collection was developed in conjunction with Mr. Miyaki’s in-house R&D team, established in 2007 as Reality Lab. (The name — not to be confused with Meta’s Reality Labs division, though arguably its predecessor — was also later used for a retail store in Tokyo.)

Works from all these series are now included in the museum’s collection, such as Metropolitan Museum of ArtThis Museum of Modern ArtThis Victoria and Albert Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They are extraordinary – soft sculptures that morph and move with the body – but they are unique in that they are not only considered beautiful things, but solutions to everyday needs (Issey Miyake’s fundamental values ​​are ” The Importance of Clothes for Life”). That’s how they work.

That’s where the black turtleneck comes in. It’s by no means the funniest outfit for Mr. Miyake. It might even be his most mediocre. But it embodies his founding principles and is the gateway through which anyone not particularly interested in fashion can explore Issey Miyake. That’s what Mr. Jobs did.

In fact, it was no accident that Jobs himself came into contact with Issey Miyake through technology. Or, the late Apple founder told his biographer Walter Isaacson.

according to mr isacson’s book, “Steve Jobs,” Mr. Jobs was fascinated by the uniform jacket Mr. Miyake made for Sony employees in 1981. Made of ripstop nylon, it has no lapels, and the sleeves can be zipped to turn the jacket into a vest. Mr. Jobs loved it and what it represented (corporate cohesion) so much that he asked Issey Miyake to make a similar style for Apple’s employees – although when he returned to Cupertino with the idea he was “booed” Step down,” he told Mr Isaacson.

Still, according to Mr. Isaacson’s book, the two became friends, and Mr. Jobs visited Mr. Miyake frequently, eventually adopting a Mr. Miyake outfit — a black faux turtleneck — as a key part of his own uniform . It’s a garment that eliminates unwanted creases from the neck, with the comfort of a T-shirt and sweatshirt, but with the cool, minimalist lines of a jacket.

Mr. Miyake made him “like a hundred,” Jobs said in the book, and he wore them until his death in 2011. (Mr. Isaacson wrote that he saw them stacked in Mr. Jobs’ wardrobe, and the cover of the book featured a portrait of Mr. Jobs in a black faux turtleneck.)

Compared to his Levi’s 501s and New Balance shoes, the turtleneck became synonymous with Mr. Jobs’ genius and focus: the way he chose uniforms to reduce the decisions he had to make in the morning and better focus on his work.This is the method of dressing that was later adopted by followers, including mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama. He was also able to incorporate soft corner elegance and practicality into his own style, as well as the style of his products.

as Ryan Tate GawkerTroy Patterson of the turtleneck that “helped him become the most recognizable CEO in the world” Bloomberg Call it “the vestment of secular monks”. It’s so ingrained in pop culture that Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes later adopted it when trying to convince the world of her own Jobs-like talent, though the Issey Miyake brand pulled out of the genre in 2011 following Mr. Jobs’ death. style. (The updated version is Reintroduced in 2017 as “semi-dull T”)

It’s ok. By then, the overall temperament of the dress had changed. After all, before Mr. Jobs met Mr. Miyake, black turtlenecks were mostly the domain of beatniks and Samuel Beckett, with clove cigarettes, downtown and poetry readings (along with ninjas, cat thieves, and anyone who wanted to blend in with the night) ) related. After that, it means a paradigm shift.

But it would not exist without Mr. Miyake. Mr. Jobs is not the typical muse of fashion clichés. But he surpassed even the architects and artists drawn to Miyake clothing, and he has become a historical ambassador for the designer: a truly populist part of the legacy that has helped shape not only the rare interior mecca of design, but the way we think The essence of it is about dress.



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