A-POC unleashes the freedom of imagination. It's for people who are curious, who have inner energy - the energy of life and living.
— Issey Miyake
Architects always have a feel for time - the generation they live in - as we do, and they are always striving toward boundless adventure.
My generation in Japan lived in limbo. We dreamed between two worlds.
In the past, art was admired and revered from afar. Today, there is more of an interactive relationship between the art and the person who admires it.
My design is no design.
I respect men and women who age and are proud and don't lose energy. I think fashion forgot those people.
Indian clothes are usually tight.
I've never been involved in any kind of political movement.
A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.
From the beginning I thought about working with the body in movement, the space between the body and clothes. I wanted the clothes to move when people moved. The clothes are also for people to dance or laugh.
I started to work with cotton fabrics. I used cotton because it's easy to work with, to wash, to take care of, to wear if it's warm or cold. It's great. That was the start.
Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.
We can also cut by heat - heat punch. And we also can cut by cold - extreme cold. When you cut with heat, it makes a mark. With cold, no mark. It depends on the fabric.
The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.
The future of fashion is light, durable clothes.
Frank Gehry not only understood my sense of fun and adventure but also reciprocated it and translated that feeling into his work.
There are no boundaries for what can be fabric.
I am not really interested in clothing as a conceptual art form.
The joining of the Japanese with the French should make a new movement. I think it should be good for Paris.
I make clothing, and I don't care about trendy things.
I did not want to be labelled 'the designer who survived the atomic bomb,' and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.
Most of us feel some kind of uncertainty, with the population increasing and resources decreasing. We have to face these issues.
By the way, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14.
I have worked with several dance companies.
I very much like dance and dancers.
One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.
Well, what I'm doing is really clothing. I'm not doing sculpture.
I became a fashion designer to make clothes for the people, not to be a top couturier in the French tradition.
I realised I wanted to make clothing which was as universal as jeans and T-shirts.
I suppose there are many, but I cannot imagine ever having a more perfect collaboration than that which Penn-san and I shared. It was based upon mutual trust, respect, and a desire to have our own work pushed to new places. And it always resulted in delight.
I'd rather look to the future than to the past.
Paris is an old and traditional place; it needs new blood.
We have to keep a very tight check on quality.
I was always interested in making clothing that is worn by people in the real world.
Design is not for philosophy it's for life.
Even when I work with computers, with high technology, I always try to put in the touch of the hand.
I sent 200, 300 of the clothes that I had made, and the dancers chose what they liked.
Many people will say, well, clothes should be worn; but I think people can look at them in public, like seeing a film. I think museum exhibitions are very important.
To be honest, I think we should find first the possibility to make it. Research is first - if you're not interested, you never can find something. Many things happen from forgotten machines - ones that are no longer used.
You see it in the many bouncing clothes that are not just pleats. To make them, two or three people twist them - twist, twist, twist the pleats, sometimes three or four persons twist together and put it all in the machine to cook it.
