RIP Extraordinary Issey Miyake 1938-2022

Posted by on Aug 9, 2022 in Helen's Blog | 0 comments

RIP Extraordinary Issey Miyake 1938-2022

Photos: Franco Rossi, Eric Deniset, Neal Fenkell Harris

RIP Issey Miyake, the famed Japanese fashion designer was totally extraordinary, remembered for his pleats but I remember him for his high-spirited Paris shows for which he allowed the superstar hairdresser John Sahag to go all out with what must surely be some of the most amazing hair ever walking the fashion runways. “For Issey Miyake, I treat hair like fabrics, never like hair, anything but hair,” said John Sahag, whose Workshop Salon in New York became a workshop before every Paris show, literally all the staff working on hair pieces and wigs for at least 10 days before the shows, way into the night.  

There was the Andy Warhol-inspired futuristic hair with lightbulbs going on and off at the Fall/Winter 1996 Paris Fashion Week … The aerodynamic, turbulent, no style styles with exaggerated volume and windswept  amazing shapes at the Fall/Winter 1997 Fashion Week …  The abstract hair with unusual knots, add-ons, take-off wired, bendable hairpieces often with sections floating in the air at the S/S 96 Paris Fashion Week – there were 157 hairpieces, in 30-40 different textures, hand-sewed, gelled, baked, none of them looking like hair in this show, for which each of the 33 models’ hair was changed 3 to 5 times.  Sahag, who worked very closely with Miyake,  said he didn’t sleep for 48 hours. If only more fashion designers were like Issey Miyake when it comes to hair!!!    To see more from these  very unusual three shows, and full credits, see and read the stories in the first three albums on this page – CLICK HERE

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