Issey Miyake brought the avant-garde back to earth

Style Points is a weekly column on how fashion intersects with the rest of the world.

Most designers would give anything for Issey Miyake's endurance. The designer, who died at 84, comfortably navigated the worlds of avant-garde innovation and mass appeal, becoming known for his pleated separates as well as his best-selling Bao Bao bag, with its shape easily identifiable futuristic.

After launching his studio in 1970, the Japanese-born designer became a mad scientist in clothing, treating the studio like his own personal laboratory, or toy store. He brought a touch of fun to his craft, whether it was a half-filled balloon worn as a hat, headdresses that looked like slices of cheese, or a group of models connected by a single piece. of red fabric, while his shows included playful elements. such as exuberant dance performances or flying saucer-shaped balloons floating above the models' heads.

Models attached to each other by a strip of red fabric at the end of Japanese designer Issey Miyake's Spring/Summer 99 ready-to-wear collection in Paris.

PIERRE VERDY/AFP/Getty Images

Even when fashion was at its most austere, Miyake's deep sense of joy transcended the passing moods of the moment. His unwavering embrace of the ultimate uncool emotion, happiness, may have been influenced by trauma: he witnessed and survived the bombing of Hiroshima at the age of seven. Like many people who have lived through heartbreaking world historical events, Miyake is committed to making the world a more positive place, writing in an op-ed in New York Times that he “prefers to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. And he helped put Japanese fashion on the map, debuting at Paris Fashion Week in 1973. His designs ended up on the September cover of ELLE France that year.