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"Seashell"

Design House Miyake Design Studio Japanese
Designer Issey Miyake Japanese
spring/summer 1985
Not on view
Consistently attentive to cloth's interplay with the human body, by 1985 Issey Miyake was becoming more artificial in his dimensionality, building architectural shapes and infusing the structures of his textiles with permanence and solidity. Miyake developed several heat embossing and texturing processes through the Miyake Design Studio collective (established in 1970) to manipulate knitwear and synthetics into three-dimensional pleats and forms. The "Seashell" coat, also referred to as the "Shell-knit" coat is constructed with a combination of cotton-linen thread and cotton-linen-wrapped nylon fishing line to create its shell-like shape. The organic architecture of the coat, as well as the visual splendor of alternating red, lavender, and pink stripes running between elegant gray ribs, may have been inspired by the designer's 1969 apprenticeship with designer and cloth sculptor Geoffrey Beene.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: "Seashell"
  • Design House: Miyake Design Studio (Japanese, founded 1970)
  • Designer: Issey Miyake (Japanese, 1938–2022)
  • Date: spring/summer 1985
  • Culture: Japanese
  • Medium: cotton, nylon, linen
  • Credit Line: Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2003
  • Object Number: 2003.79.16
  • Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute

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