What do we lose when a designer like Issey Miyake — with global impact on how the human form can determine the shape of clothes, the dance between engineering, technology and textile — is gathered to dust? What do social media “likes” and traction to Miyake’s obituaries suggest?
Younger Indian consumers may not instantly connect ubiquitous Issey Miyake perfumes with a Japanese mind first inspired by bridges named Ikiru (to live) and Shinu (to die). Whose East meets West fashion in the 70s, especially the ‘Paradise Lost’ collection of 1976 and since then, was not merely a predictable ascendance of Asian design to international acclaim. It was a one-of-a-kind “arrival”, even though Kenzo Yakada had been there before Miyake.
