Much more than a fashion brand, A-POC ABLE sets out to weave the future by engaging different creative minds and professionals in collaborative projects and multidisciplinary conversations
Issey Miyake – What is A-POC?
In 2021 A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE was presented to the world for the first time. Born from the creative genius of Issey Miyake, it is perhaps the most innovative and multifaceted brand of the homonymous fashion house founded by the Japanese designer in 1970. To fully understand the philosophy behind A-POC ABLE and its complex product offering, however, it is necessary to take a few steps back.
Since its foundation, the established Japanese fashion house has been characterized by an in-depth search for innovative materials and futuristic technologies which have led to the birth of revolutionary collections – which later became brands in their own right – such as PLEATS PLEASE or BAO BAO. After years of research and experimentation, in 1998 the designer finally conceived A-POC (‘A Piece of Cloth’), a production method which consists in creating garments starting from a single piece of fabric, thus minimizing cuts and seams. Each dress is a flat piece of fabric which becomes a tri-dimensional shape when worn by the final consumer.
A-POC is in fact based on a second concept: the active involvement of wearers during the final phases of the creative process. Since the garments have no hems, wearers can easily change the length of the sleeves or of the entire garment by simply cutting along the appropriate dashed lines, while shape-memory materials allow them to roll up the cuffs without them falling every two seconds or leaving unpleasant wrinkles when rolled down.
The evolution of A-POC: from 1998 to this day
A-POC was presented for the first time as part of Issey Miyake’s SS1999 collection at Paris Fashion Week., but Miyake felt that this groundbreaking technology had the potential to push the boundaries of fashion and clothing into other realms of creativity. For this reason, the following exhibitions and presentations of A-POC did not take place during Paris Fashion Week, but in contemporary art and design museums and galleries around the world. The first launch of A-POC as a design product was A-POC MAKING: ISSEY MIYAKE & DAI FUJIWARA (2001) at the Vitra Museum in Berlin and the exhibition Nannano? A-POC: MIYAKE ISSEY + DAI FUJIWARA (2003) inside the premised of Axis Gallery in Tokyo, devoted to interiors and design.
«Nannano means ‘What is it?’, because even Mr. Miyake was not sure how to define A-POC so he metaphorically posed this question to the visitors. It was not a fashion exhibition, he showcased the materials and techniques in order to explain the processes behind A-POC products», explains Yoshiyuki Miyamae, project leader of A-POC ABLE. As proof of its versatile nature and multiple applications in everyday life, Milan Design Week 2006 was the scenario in which A-POC was unveiled to the Italian audience through a collaboration with Moroso, established Italian brand specialized in the production of sofas, armchairs and furnishing accessories.
The infinite potential of A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE
When Miyamae became designer of Issey Miyake in 2011, he dedicated himself to further investigated the prospects of A-POC. This thorough research resulted in his revolutionary Autumn/Winter collection launched in 2012 during Paris Fashion Week. The fashion show opened with a practical demonstration of the new steam stretch technology: the elastic yarn combined with silk reacts to the steam, transforming the fabric into three-dimensional structures similar to paper sculptures created with the famous Japanese origami technique.
«As a stylist I have always been committed to creating innovative materials and have always supported the potential of A-POC. With Mr. Miyake we launched this new brand in 2021 and added the word ‘ABLE’ at the end to give an idea of the infinite yet undiscovered potential of A-POC», the designer says. Miyamae’s goal with A-POC ABLE is to overcome the seasonality of fashion – which requires a collection to be presented every six months – and to create products in constant dialogue with society which can potentially last forever because of the role they play in the daily life of wearers.
«The world of fashion goes faster and faster. But with Mr. Miyake we realized that these dynamics cannot be perpetuated much longer, it takes time to innovate and do good for society. Time to mature ideas and develop projects», he claims.
Project Types: A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE as a catalyst for creativity and innovation
Following the teachings of Miyake, Miyamae’s goal is to develop projects in collaboration with creatives and professionals usually operating outside the fashion world. A-POC ABLE wants to act as a catalyst for ideas and creative inputs from the most disparate fields of knowledge and spheres of creativity, from art to product design, from aerospace engineering to craftsmanship. These creative synergies are called Project Types. With this in mind, in occasion of Milan Design Week 2022 Miyamae presented in the showroom located in Via Bagutta Thinking Design, Making Design.
Halfway between fashion and art, the exhibition stemmed from the collaborative project TYPE-II Tatsuo Miyajima project. The world-renowned artist Tatsuo Miyajima was selected for his sharp representation of time and life through the use of the numbers 1 trough 9 based on three concepts: ‘ it keeps changing,’ ‘it connects with everything,’ and ‘it continues forever’, a perfect synthesis of the philosophy behind A-POC ABLE.
«To keep cresting you always need new inputs and artists are an endless source of brilliant points of view. Italy and Europe are more advantaged because art is everywhere, children interact with art from an early age, at home and in museums. In Japan, on the other hand, art is detached from the daily life. Mr. Miyake argued that a dress could be the closest thing to art in our everyday life», Miyamae explains.
Milan Design Week 2023: TYPE-V Nature Architects project
The city of Milan will be the worldwide springboard for A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE. For this launch – which will take place inside the premises of the Milan showroom – the newborn brand has collaborated in synergy with two Japanese engineers known as Nature Architects with the aim of highlighting the potential of the technology on which Miyamae and his team have been working for years.
The engineering duo applied DFM – Direct Functional Modeling, design algorithms capable of determining the shape of a product through a process focusing on the needs of the consumer with the aim of automating and optimizing the design process – to steam stretch technique in order to further optimize the production process by minimizing waste, timing and improving the final aesthetic result. The integration of metamaterials – materials recreated with properties different from those which would naturally belong to them – in the A-POC system also allows for a variety of pleats and processes which previously could not be achieved due to the limitations imposed by the intrinsic characteristics of the fabrics employed.
Milan – world capital of design: a crossroads of creative ideas
Fuorisalone 2023 will be the occasion to present a wide series of products ranging from clothes to furniture items – such as puffs and lamps – sourced from single pieces of fabric using a spherical model, in order to demonstrate once more the versatility of the A-POC method, further enhanced by the engineering work of Nature Architects.
«With Mr. Miyake we were looking for the most suitable place to launch A-POC ABLE in the world. Paris would have been the easiest choice because it is the world fashion capital, but A-POC ABLE is not a fashion brand, it is something more. If we presented it as a simple fashion product we should be talking about color, shape, seasons. But we create design pieces – quite the opposite – thus we care about the creative process, its future development and how it fits into social life. All these elements make it a perfect project to create synergy with other designers and Milan Design Week 2023 will be a starting point to develop a dialogue with other international creatives», the project leader claims.
The installation will close with a scale prototype of a building designed with the A-POC method and bearing the same structure as the clothes and furnishing objects exhibited in the previous rooms. The desire is to create a multicultural and multidisciplinary dialogue around the prototype and gather input from architects, designers and engineers from which new collaborative projects could arise in the future.
Product Types: genderless, comfortable, endless design
The items produced under the A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE label are divided into categories called Product Types, differing in terms of product line, aesthetic features and printing techniques. From Type-A, a collection of classic cotton and nylon t-shirts and a tribute to the birth of A-POC technology, to Type-S and Type-O, characterized by the famous accordion pleats created with the steam stretch technique, followed by Type-U, a jacket made of a unique shape-memory material. Genderless, comfortable and carefully handcrafted in the Kyoto factory through a fruitful synergy between technology and human mastery: every piece of cloth created with the A-POC method has all the parts of the garment already woven in and is then cut out with scissors.
Combining the recognizable aesthetics of Issey Miyake with the cutting-edge technology of the A-POC method, Miyamae and his team aim at bringing to the market a high-quality product with a unique and immortal design, such as the PLEATS PLEASE collections and the BAO BAO bag, which became statements of the Japanese fashion house’s style as well as of a new, more sustainable and innovative fashion concept. «In his 50-year career, Mr. Miyake has always tried to integrate his products into social life thanks to his open mindset and a direct contact with those who bought and wore his clothes. This is the most valuable thing I learned from Mr. Miyake and with A-POC ABLE I want to carry on his legacy and honor his work».
A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE
It is a brand that sets out to weave the future by instigating dialogues on clothing between creators and wearers. A-POC, announced in 1998, has revolutionized the process of clothes-making, where it introduced a new form of design in which the wearers partake.
