Issey Miyake, Japanese Fashion Designer, Dies at 84 - The New York Times

He was known for his innovative origami-like designs, creating skirts, dresses and trousers with prisms of unfolding shapes.

TOKYO — Issey Miyake, the Japanese designer famed for his pleated style of clothing and cult perfumes, and whose name became a global byword for cutting-edge fashion in the 1980s, died on Friday in Tokyo.

The death was announced on Tuesday by the Miyake Design Studio, which said the cause was liver cancer.

Miyake is perhaps best known for his micro pleating, which he first unveiled in 1988 but has lately enjoyed a surge in popularity among a new and younger consumer base.

His proprietary heat treating system meant that the accordionlike pleats in his designs could be machine washed, would never lose their shape and offered the ease of loungewear.

His designs found their way onto the 1982 cover of Artforum — unheard-of for a fashion designer at the time — and into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

After studying in Paris during the student protests of 1968, and a stint in New York, he founded the Miyake Design Studio in 1970.

Still, he was perhaps best known as a designer whose styles combined the discipline of fashion with technology and art.

His animating idea was that clothes should be made from one piece of fabric, and he pursued designs — such as his famous pleats — that incorporated new techniques and fabrics to accomplish that ambition.