One of pop music's most original auteurs, Jones built her indelible image through the late Japanese designer's work.
, model, activist, and Miyake collaborator Bethann Hardison remembers the designer enlisting her to helm casting for “a big show in Japan… that included Grace Jones and other beauties of that time.” This would be a 1976 fashion performance billed as “Issey Miyake and Twelve Black Girls” during which Grace, Bethann, and other models traveled from Tokyo to Osaka to strut for sold-out crowds in Miyake clothing.
Recounted in, Miyake cast Jones as the leader who would"sing and have multiple roles within what was a fashion show remade as a happening.” Up until then, Jones was a working model striving to claw her way into life as a theater performer. This event cleared the path to Jones’s future as"not a singer, not a model, not a dancer, not an actress, not a performance artist: all of that together, and therefore something else." It was Miyake’s prescient combination of art, fashion, and celebrity that elevated Jones to the echelon she deserved. Throughout both of their lives, the relationship was symbiotic.Ron GalellaThat’s because Jones strikes at the heart of what it means to wear Miyake’s clothing: to be enveloped in its folds it is to be transformed into “something else” beyond the constraints of time, place, or gender. Both designer and performer beckon the public to ceaselessly quest into the depths of modernity, all together made evermore human in our synchronous weaving together of past, present, and future that results in something entirely new and propulsive. If Miyake’s clothing requires a body to be fully appreciated, Jones is the living embodiment of his principles. As she moves, however slowly, she snatches the rest of us into tomorrow at lightspeed in a spaceship made from gossamer pleated polyester and single threads that can be seamlessly spun into infinitely wearable creations.Naturally, there was no one better to breathe new life into the designer’s Spring 1982 woven rattan vest and synthetic skirt–the same groundbreaking ensemble worn on the, itself a direct challenge to an isolated art world which until then turned up its nose at fashion as unworthy of artistic merit. Only Jones took it up a notch, natch, when she donned the coordinating woven rattan hat not pictured on the cover, repeatedly bumping into Rick James onstage at the Grammys in 1983 and crash landing into living rooms across the world. Through a celebrity moment totally her own, Jones bridged the world of avant-garde fashion and mass culture, solidifying her position as pop nonconformistJones was not only a fan of Miyake’s diaphanous, expandable ensembles—she has repeatedly worn Miyake’s molded breastplates. A nod to Yves Saint Laurent and Claude Lalanne’s 1969 version, Miyake’s both hid the body and exposed it for the world to see . With both looks, Jones actively mirrored Miyake’s own expansive push toward the future: if he challenged established western tenets of design and taste, she was radically and declaratively herself, unwilling to conform to the pop music machine’s standards around how a performer, particularly a Black woman, should look and act.Together they are the anti-gatekeepers of fashion, bringing to life the communal curiosity embedded within the pleats and folds of Miyake’s garments. Miyake said of his designs, “I get angry if they don’t move.” As a counterpoint, Jones has centered joyous forward momentum as a generative balancing act in lockstep with Miyake, himself a survivor of the destructive force of the Hiroshima bombing. Jones has continually inspired movement on dancefloors, in manners of dress, and in our understanding of gender. She yanked the experimental into pop culture at large. At the beginning of her career, she credits Miyake with helping her realize that “I was the countdown to an explosion that was always about to happen.”This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
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