The real beginning of the fashion-technology love affair between Steve Jobs and the black mock turtleneck — and its legacy — lies with Issey Miyake.
The man behind Jobs’s personal uniform, who died on Aug. 5 at age 84, was a pioneer in all sorts of ways — the first foreign designer to show at Paris Fashion Week (in April 1974), among the first designers to collaborate with artists and a proponent of “comfort dressing” long before the term ever existed. But it was his understanding and appreciation of technology and how it could be harnessed to an aesthetic point of view to create new, seductive utilities that set Miyake apart, writes our chief fashion critic.
Miyake was the original champion of fashion tech. He pushed the boundaries of material innovation to bridge past and future, beginning in 1988 with his research into the heat press.
Pieces from Miyake’s lines are now included in the collections of museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are extraordinary — soft sculptures that morph and move with the body — but what makes them singular is that they were conceived not just as beautiful things but as solutions to everyday needs (a Miyake basic value was the importance of “clothes for living”). And they functioned as such.
The black turtleneck embodies his founding principles and serves as the door through which anyone not particularly interested in fashion could walk to discover the Miyake universe. Jobs did just that.
Head to the link in bio to read the appraisal by @vvfriedman. Photos by Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images; Pierre Guillaud/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Patrick Kovarik/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; William Stevens/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images and @markwickens.
