The opening of Japan’s doors in 1854 enabled the West to come into significant contact with Japanese culture for the first time. New trade agreements beginning in the 1850s resulted in an unprecedented flow of travelers and goods between cultures. And by the end of the nineteenth century, "japonisme" can be found in fashion, interior design and art. For sartorial references, Chrysanthemum prints or exotic fabrics were used by many couturiers, such as Charles Frederick Worth and Coco Chanel. Jeanne Lanvin’s Castillo jeweled silk organza evening jacket with matching obi sash from the 1950s, simulates kimono in the most apparent manner possible. As for those who were fascinated by the kimono’s construction, like Madeleine Vionnet, cut dresses in flat panels and decorated them with wave-seaming, a Japanese hand-stitching technique. The exposure of Japanese culture to the West was not completely new.
In October 1982, the word ‘Japanese’ featured prominently in the various headlines of newspaper articles reporting on the Spring/Summer 1983 fashion collections. Ten of the seventy or so shows held in Paris were by Japanese designers. While the sheer number was widely noted, journalists and critics were also shocked by the garments unveiled by two upcoming designers - Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, with whom Miyake is often grouped. The press was largely critical in their responses to the designers' work at this time. Behind their disapprobation was the incredulity at what seems to be an audacious assault on Western fashion tradition, as well as the dawning realization of a cultural divide in terms of sartorial design.
As Samantha Vettese Forster points out, Kawakubo and Yamamoto's aesthetics in many aspects parallel to what would later come to be labelled as "deconstruction in the postmodern West." On the one hand, scholars who have familiarity with Japanese culture and history, such as Akiko Fukai, would highlight the significant influence of traditional Japanese ideologies, such as ma and wabi-sabi, on the designers' work. On the other hand, post-structuralist scholars such as Barbara Vinken, would go so far as to claim that "authenticity is, in any case, a tricky concept in Japan... The history of Western fashion is the fabric from which their clothes were made." She grouped Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto as the like-minded and, framed them as the "ex negativo" of Western ideas of fashion, masculinity, femininity, elegance and eroticism. In Vinken's vision, "the empire has designed back - with a vengeance." Vinken's reading is certainly worthy of consideration. However, when pushed to an extreme, it becomes too binary and nihilistic. Therefore, in this section I would like argue against both reading Miyake as an antithesis of Western fashion, and the general grouping of Miyake with Kawakubo and Yamamoto.
Before 1982, Paris was in fact already well acquainted with Japanese designers. Hanae Mori had long been a member of La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Kenzo Takada was deemed as a designer who typified Parisian fashion. Issey Miyake was highly regarded as well. It was not until the debut of Kawakubo and Yamamoto, that Miyake became presented as part of the "Big Three" narrative - that is, Japanese fashion as epitomized by Kawakubo, Yamamoto and Miyake.
While his early work focused on sashiko, the quilted cotton worn by Japanese peasants, and he has always reinterpreted traditional Japanese garments, including the kimono and the fisherman's tunic, Miyake nevertheless should not be simply pigeonholed as a Japanese designer. In 1964, Miyake graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo with a degree in graphic design. Not long after he arrived in Paris, enrolled in the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and worked first with Guy Laroche, then for Givenchy, before moving to New York, where he was employed by Geoffrey Beene. His clothes, as Miyake has always said, are indebted to Japanese tradition, just as they are to other heritages: “I had to be free of the Occidental way, of Occidental ideas, but there are still a lot of things to learn from them. It is very important to keep tradition.” His study in Paris and working experiences all have made substantial impacts on him, resulting in an all-embracing perspective, rather than mere defiance against the West.
Variant cultures and their respective technological histories have propelled Miyake's creation. In the early 1990s, Issey Miyake presented the aforementioned PLEATS PLEASE line, under the inspiration of Ancient Egyptian and Greek pleats. After "Pleats Please" came "A-POC." In the 2006 Kyoto Prize interview, Miyake so explains: "I'm not sure whether this concept is in fact 'oriental' ... from ancient times, in Greece and in Africa, every culture has started making clothes from a single piece of cloth, or skin. And even now, in India, a single piece of cloth is simply wound round the body. One of these pieces of cloths is the kimono, which has been highly refined... From having been developed for so long, the kimono has come to be identified with the phrase ‘a piece of cloth.’ ” Rather than seeing sartorial cultures and traditions as being fundamentally disparate, Miyake is fascinated by the common threads that have once weaved global culture into an organic whole.
Aside from "Pleats Please" and "A-POC", HaaT is a clothing line established by Miyake in 1981, in collaboration with an Indian woman named Asha Sarabhai. HaaT is named out of a threefold play on words with different meanings. First, HaaT means 'village market' in Sanskrit, symbolizing a collection that includes a diverse range of techniques, textiles and aesthetics. The second is a wordplay of 'Heart,' a reference to the warm, heartfelt, human touch to textiles. Last but not least, 'Haath' is the Sanskrit word for 'hands,' conveying the subtle nuances that arise from the collaboration between design emanating from Japan, and the craftsmanship from India. The project is another affidavit of Miyake’s vision of meaningful cooperative design across culture.