Colin McDowell reports on Issey Miyake and fashion that starts with folded paper

Just because fashion is not always the most rigorously intellectual of the creative arts does not mean that it is devoid of any cerebral content whatsoever. There are designers who look more rigorously at the question of creativity than their fellows, so many of whom primarily equate success with sales figures. One of the more visionary is Issey Miyake who, in a long career, has never been content to accept a formulaic, variations-on-a-theme approach to his craft. Even when his ideas meet with instant success, as his Pleats Please line did and still does today, his febrile mind is always searching for ways of moving forward. So it is no surprise to learn that since he handed over the day-to-day design of the Issey Miyake label to Naoki Takizawa in 1999 (and today Dai Fujiwara is the creative director) he has not been content to sit back and relax. The Miyaki Design Studio moves forward and, like a Japanese Bauhaus, works with artists, musicians and illustrators to spark ideas that foretell a different dress future than that in which more overtly commercial fashion currently deals.

The latest development from the Issey Miyake studio was unveiled simultaneously in New York, Paris, Zurich and London on November 25th with the label 132. 5. (1: A Piece of Cloth; 3: 3 Dimensional Shape; 2: material folded into a two-dimensional shape and 5 - after a gap- symbolizing the time between buying and wearing). Created by Reality Lab, a research development team that includes textile and pattern engineers 132. 5. is basically a way of designing three-dimensional clothing by starting with folded paper in digital triangles and squares to produce ten basic templates for garments. From these, dresses, shirts, skirts and pants can be produced in many variations, all made from a special polyester created from recycled materials. Some of the results can be seen in the Barbican exhibition of Japanese fashion (until 6 February 2011) as well as at the exhibition 21_21 Design Sight Reality Lab in Tokyo (until 26 December 2010).

These experiments may not be the entire future for 21st century fashion but they are clearly pointing to a different one than that foreseen by commercial designers in the West. In this, they echo the current thinking of architects who marry theory and practicality in order to address situations that are more likely to be a reaction to and development of current art thinking than to the work of fellow architects. We have only to think of Herzog & de Meuron, who redesigned the Bankside Power Station to make Tate Modern, if we wish to understand the minimalist relationship between form and structure that has preoccupied Miyake - and other Japanese designers - for many years. The area that they occupy could be described as that special creative circle where the material meets the metaphysical and the discussion is about art, architecture and fashion, not as separate and exclusive entities but as a metaphor for future thought, whereby all creative distinctions will melt into one whole honed to do many different things together. 

Framing Fashion and Architecture discussion with Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic, architect and designer Sou Fujimoto, Ab Rogers and Sophie Hicks takes place at the Barbican, December 9th at 7:30pm.

Colin McDowell is a fashion historian and author of many books on the subject, including Fashion Today