Issey Miyake.. who survived the Hiroshima bomb and produced “Beauty and Joy” for the world

Although the Hiroshima bomb left him with a limp for the rest of his life, Issey Miyake rarely spoke about the event, which deeply traumatized his life.

AFP

The Japanese fashion designer, Issey Miyake, who died yesterday at the age of 84, made a great change in the world of fashion with his avant-garde innovations. The clothes that bore his signature were characterized by their practical and comfortable nature. Who was a witness, in his childhood, to the horrors of the atomic bomb in his hometown of Hiroshima, where he escaped certain death.

Miyake was among a wave of young Japanese designers, which also included Rei Kawakubo and Yuji Yamamoto, who made their mark in the fashion world in the French capital since the mid-1970s, after Kenzo Takada and Hana Mori emerged before them.

Throughout his global career, which spanned more than half a century, he has created comfortable clothing and "technology fashion", adopting a simple approach rather than the voluminousness of haute couture.

What he created, for example, is the "Bites Blaze" collection, which is a permanently folded and wrinkle-free piece of clothing, updating an old concept based on providing fluidity and comfort.

The futuristic triangles of Miyake's geometric bao bao bag complemented a plethora of elegant outfits, and more than 100 black jackets were made for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Issey Miyake, who was born in 1938 in Hiroshima (western Japan), was seven years old when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb in history on his hometown, killing 140,000 people and causing deep psychological trauma to the survivors that left its mark on their lives.

Issei's mother died three years after the bomb was dropped due to complications from exposure to radiation.

Although the Hiroshima bomb left him limp for the rest of his life, he rarely spoke about this profoundly traumatic event in his life, but he once broke his silence in a 2009 New York Times article calling for nuclear disarmament.

"When I close my eyes, I still see things that no one should experience: a bright red light, after a short time a black cloud, and then people running in every direction in a desperate attempt to escape," he wrote.

By the 1980s, his career was at its height, using materials ranging from plastic to metal wire to Japanese craft paper in his designs.

Miyake retired from designing his Parisian collections at the turn of the century, and has since given a string of talented young designers the chance of a lifetime.

But he continued to oversee his brand, and his obsession with technology continued.

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