Steve Jobs was fond of Issey Miyake.
The man behind Mr. Jobs's personal uniform of black mock turtlenecks was a pioneer in many ways. It was his understanding and appreciation of technology that made Mr. Miyake different.
Before there were connected jackets, before there were 3-D printed sneakers, and before there were laser cut lace, there was Mr. Miyake. He was the leader of fashion tech at the time.
It began in 1988 with Mr. Miyake's research into the heat press and how it could be used to create garments that were two or three times larger than normal, which was then pressed between two sheets of paper and shaped into a knife. The re-engineering of the classic Grecian drapes of Mario Fortuny into something both practical and weirdly fun began in 1994.
Next came an experiment in which a continuous piece of thread fed into an industrial knitting machine could be used to create a single piece of cloth that could be cut out as desired by the wearer. The collection was first introduced in 1997 and is known as A-POC.
Mr. Miyaki launched 132 5 in 2010 after taking a break from his day-to-day responsibilities. It consisted of flat-pack items in complex folds that popped open to create three-dimensional pieces. The collection was developed with the help of the Reality Lab. The name was later used for a retail store in Tokyo.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art all have pieces from all of these lines. Soft sculptures that move with the body are extraordinary, but what makes them singular is that they were conceived as solutions to everyday needs. They worked as such.
The black turtleneck is in this location. It wasn't Mr Miyake's most interesting garment. It might have been his most boring. It is the door through which anyone not particularly interested in fashion could go to discover the Miyake universe. That's what Mr. Jobs did.
Technology is what brought Mr. Jobs to Mr. Miyake. Walter said that the Apple founder said that.
Mr. Jobs was interested in the jacket created by Mr. Miyake. It was made from ripstop nylon and had sleeves that could be opened to make a vest. When Mr. Jobs asked Mr. Miyake to make a similar style for Apple's employees, he was kicked off the stage.
The two men became friends, and Mr. Jobs would often visit Mr. Miyake. The garment that did away with the extraneous fold at the neck had the ease of a T-shirt and a sweatshirt but also the cool, minimal lines of a jacket.
Mr Jobs said that Mr Miyake made him like a hundred of them. The book's cover features a portrait of Mr. Jobs in a black mock turtleneck.
The turtleneck became synonymous with Mr. Jobs because of how he settled on a uniform to reduce the number of decisions he had to make. It was an approach to dress that was adopted by many people. His ability to blend soft-corner elegance and utility in not just his own style but the style of his products is something else.
The turtleneck made him the world's most recognizable C.E.O., according to Ryan Tate. Troy said it was the vestment of a monk. Even though Mr. Miyake's brand retired the style after Mr. Jobs's death, Elizabeth was still using it when she tried to convince the world of her own brilliance. The Semi-Dull T. was re-introduced as an updated version.
It didn't make a difference. The ethos of the garment had changed at that time. Before Mr. Jobs met Mr. Miyake, the black turtleneck was mostly associated with beatniks and Samuel Beckett. It means paradigm shifts after that.
Mr. Miyake was the one who made it happen. Mr. Jobs was a different kind of muse. He has become the designer's ambassador to history, a genuine populist part of a legacy that helped shape not just the rarefied inner sanctum of design, but the essence of how we think about dress.
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