Irving Penn on Issey Miyake

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A star-like creation for Issey Miyake during the 1999-2000 autumn-winter ready-to-wear collections. Photograph: Pierre Verdy/EPA A-PoC Le Feu, by Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara, 1999, an example of Miyake’s A-PoC (A Piece of Cloth) concept – extruded tubular fabric that wearers could cut out into seamless garments. Photograph: Yasuaki Yoshinaga/A-PoC Le Feu, Issey Miyake

Penn photographed for Vogue and commercial clients in America and abroad for nearly 70 years. Whether an innovative fashion image, striking portrait, or compelling still life, each of Penn’s pictures bears his trademark style of elegant aesthetic simplicity. Although Issey Miyake provided a lot of unique and interesting designs to the fashion industry, his heart was still in providing updated versions of traditional Japanese clothing. Hopkinson, Tom. "Great Photographers of the World, 1: Irving Penn." The Daily Telegraph Magazine no.287 (April 17, 1970): 34–44.Licitra, Salvatore and Lisa Licitra Ponti. "Irving Penn: Issey Miyake." Domus no. 701 (January 1989): 10–11. The Vogue editors continued to give him unprecedented autonomy over his shoots, even flying him to Paris in 1949 so that he could benefit from the highbrow aesthetic of haute couture. Penn returned with what became his signature style -- carefully staged photographs of models resembling living sculpture. Lisa Fonssagrives, one of Penn's many models, married him in 1950 and two years later gave birth to a son, Tom. They remained married until her death in 1992. Bunker, George R., ed. Alexey Brodovitch and His Influence. Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Art. 1972. Irving Penn: Fringes, PaceWildesnteinMacGill Gallery, Los Angeles, March 15–April 20, 1996. Traveled to: Hamiltons Gallery, London, May 1–31, 1996. (Catalogue) Hambourg, Maria Morris and Irving Penn. Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn’s Nudes, 1949-50 (exhibition catalogue). Boston: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Little, Brown and Co., 2002.

Mr. Miyake’s “Flying Saucer” dress, on display in 2020 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times Keaney, Magdalene and Sandy Nairne. Irving Penn: Portraits. National Portrait Gallery. London, 2010. The designer invited the photographer to document and interpret future collections, but so respectful was one master of the other, that Miyake was never in the room with Penn when the pictures were being taken. “I did not want to interfere with his freedom,” Miyake explains. “I wanted to see what he would do!” Untroubled: Irving Penn, Works from the Pinault Collection, Mina Image Centre, Beirut, Lebanon, January 17–April 28, 2019. Jodidio, Philip. "No. 500 (Twenty artists and architects each contribute a recent work to the 500th issue of Connaissance des Arts)." Connaissance des Arts no. 500 (November 1993): 68–97.Irving Penn: Portraits in a Corner, 1948, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, December 5, 1991–January 11, 1992. Japanese designer Issey Miyake passed away on August 5, 2022, at age 84. This article originally appeared in the May 2016 issue of Metropolis. A model rides on a skateboard as she presents a Miyake creation at a ready-to-wear fashion show in Paris in 2020. Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Photography in the Twentieth Century, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, February 1967. Traveled to Canada, July 30, 1967­–February 18,1968.

Recent Acquisitions 2005: Some Versions of the Portrait, International Center of Photography, New York, March 11–June 5, 2005. Kimmelman, Michael. “The Body Imperfect, 50 Years Ago and Today.” The New York Times (January 18, 2002). Some label him an artist, others see him as a style visionary, but more than anything else, Issey Miyake is the designer’s designer. For more than four decades he has created textiles, clothing and accessories for people who embrace contemporary visual culture, but who find the notion of “fashion” at least slightly ludicrous. People, in fact, such as him. Sitting in a glass-walled corner room of his Shibuya design studio overlooking Yoyogi Park, and surrounded by immaculate postmodern vintage furniture by his late friend and collaborator Shiro Kuramata, he explains his credo. “I prefer the term ‘making things’,” he says. “I want to represent the action of thinking. We are working towards the concept of […] no fashion.” Close Encounters: Irving Penn Portraits of Artists and Writers, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, January 18–April 13, 2008.Penn, Irving. Irving Penn: Cigarettes (exhibition catalogue). London: Hamiltons Gallery in collaboration with the Irving Penn Foundation, 2012.