This dress was designed by Issey Miyake, a Japanese designer whose style is regarded as Avant Garde in the late 20th century. Designed in 1996, the dress is developed from Issey Miyake’s most famous spring-summer collection in 1994 - “Pleats Please”, which has created a new silhouette by applying pleats to the dress.
Fig.1 Polyester Dress Fig.2 Sketch of dress
The dress consists of different geometric shapes- rectangles, triangles and diamonds, which are symmetric from the center line. In avoidance of repetitiveness, Issey Miyake used different tones of brown, blue and white to make these shapes. There is also colour contrast by combining warm colours and cool colours together.
The silhouette created by this dress was regarded as revolutionary in the 1980s, for it broke typical silhouette of fashion houses at that time (Breward 2003, p.92). Issey Miyake used fabric two-and-a-half to three times larger than the finished piece to create the pleats (English 2011, p.11). After ironing the fabric, both texture and shape were created. Issey Miyake’s early designs were inspired by Vionnet Madeleine, who was famous for her bias cutting and fluidity in clothing. Based on the style of Vionnet, Miyake further developed into his own style, which depended on synthetic fabrics to create silhouette (English 2011, p.11).
Different from other Paris Haute Couture houses, Issey Miyake used polyester jersey to creat this dress (Breward 2003, p.95). Polyester was rarely used in fashion houses for its informality and cheap price (Crane, 1997). This was also the reason why Issey Miyake was regarded as an Avant-Garde designer, because he tried to break the convention of using expensive fabrics and made his dresses possible to sell in a commercial way (Breward 2003, p.93).
This dress was designed in 1990s, however, it seemed that the dress was rarely affected by the social context at that time. The dress was developed from Issey Miyake’s ‘Pleats Please’ project in 1988, which was inspired by ancient Greek and Egyptian costume (Breward 2003, p.97). Issey Miyake was detached from the Haute Couture houses at that time, because he broke the convention of using expensive materials and didn’t follow typical silhouette created by Haute Couture houses. The cocktail dress of Chanel in 1986 (Fig.3) shows typical silhouette of Haute Couture houses at that time, which emphasized the lines of shoulder and waist. Issey Miyake’s works were regarded as futuristic because of his extraodinary shapes (Crane, 1997). He freed the line of women’s waist and let the body move easily, which revolutionized the silhouette of female.
Fig.3 Stripped satin cocktail dress, Chanel, 1986
Isolated from the social context in 1980s, Issey Miyake was keen on combining the western and Japanese culture together. After back to Japan, he challenged traditional Japanese culture such as Kimono and Tattoos, and remade them into his own style. He first took inspiration from cotton sahiko quilting, which was originally used in martial arts, and remade them into a softer form for contemporary wearing (Breward 2003, P.95). Later, he was also inspired by tattoos of yakuza gangsters and developed them into fabric prints’(Breward 2003, p.95). And in the 1980s, Issey Miyake launched his most famous collections, one piece clothes and pleated dresses.
Rather than influenced by present, Issey Miyake is influenced by past and future. He presented traditional Japanese culture in a futuristic way. This combination shows harmony between the past and future, east and west, which has become the unique characteristic of Issey Miyake.
Reference
1. Breward, C 2003, Fashion (Oxford history of art), Oxford University Press, Oxford, London.
2. Crane, D 1997, “Postmodernism and the Avant-Garde: Stylistic Change in Fashion Design”, Modernism/modernity, vol.4, no.3, pp. 123-140.
3. English, B 2011, Japanese fashion designers : The work and influence of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Oxford, London.