Case Study: Issey Miyake, the Dream Weaver

The fashion innovator responsible for no-sew clothing is joining with other avant-garde designers to create wearable chairs and reversible jeans

by Reena Jana

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Issey Miyake takes the concept of "cutting-edge design" literally. The Japanese fashion designer's latest innovations, to debut in fall, 2006, promise to slice across design-world boundaries and into two new markets: home furnishings and jeans. His new experiments build on the groundbreaking computer-driven manufacturing process he first developed, with design engineer Dai Fujiwara, nearly 10 years ago.

In 1997, the duo invented a means of knitting or weaving entire pieces of clothing -- no sewing needed. Thread goes into the loom, and tops, skirts, and pants come out. To be specific, a wide-flattened tube of cloth emerged, with embedded "seams" that looked like a faint outline. Each piece of clothing could be cut out of the swath of fabric, as you might separate a paper doll's dress from the page along the perforated line.

Because the process produced material that wouldn't fray, wearers could then customize the clothes as they saw fit. Miyake calls the ever-evolving process, and the line of avant-garde clothing made with it, A-POC. It's an acronym for "a piece of cloth."

UNCHARTED TERRITORY.

Never ones to stop pushing design to its most distant edges, Miyake and Fujiwara have been tinkering with the recipe for the fabric. "When we started A-POC we had no idea what its potential might be. It was a new way to make things using a new process. We have grown with the A-POC process," Miyake writes via e-mail from Japan. "Today, we feel that the potential for its applications can extend into many different areas of design. The challenge is to find materials that are suited to the process."

Fujiwara makes it clear that from the beginning of A-POC the creative duo was also simply looking for new ways to experiment with software programming. "Computer technology from the United States was a wave in the 1990s. And Issey is typhoon," says Fujiwara, who speaks in concise, nearly haiku-like sentences. "We wanted to make a new solution for making soft materials with computer technology. Hard materials have seen lots of new solutions."

Originally the prototypical A-POC fabric was a knit combination of wool, nylon, and polyurethane. In later incarnations, Miyake and Fujiwara created a more complex weave made of 100% cotton. The team later added elastic for flexibility, woven in layers to lend stretch.

CHAIR WEAR.

Today, Miyake and Fujiwara are pushing the patented A-POC process in increasingly complex directions that could potentially revolutionize the way mass-market goods like upholstered home furnishings and jeans are manufactured. And at least in theory, because no sewing is involved, A-POC technology might eventually eliminate the use of sweatshops and lower costs in both fields. (In fact, the A-POC line is already lower-priced than Miyake's other lines.)

Before the end of 2006, Miyake will offer consumers a product co-designed with hip London-based furniture maker/architect Ron Arad that blurs the edges between designer clothing and designer chairs. Called Gemini, it's a streamlined, body-cushioning seat pillow, made of A-POC fabric, which morphs into an elegant, body-hugging jacket.

Around the same time, Miyake and Fujiwara will debut the world's first line of reversible jeans. The new product will position Miyake to tap into the growing premium-jeans market -- which accounted for 18% of 2005 women's denim sales in U.S. department stores, up from 12% in 2004, according to research from NPD Group.