Issey Miyake was born in Hiroshima, in the southern part of Japan, in 1938. In 1965 he graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo, where he majored in graphic design. Following graduation, he went to Paris just three months after Kenzo Takada, the first Japanese designer to became successful in France, arrived there. He then went to New York to work with the American designer Geoffrey Beene before returning to Tokyo, where he founded the Miyake Design Studio in 1970. One of Miyake's New York friends took some of his design samples to Vogue magazine and a major department store, Bloomingdale's. Both Vogue and Bloomingdale's were enthusiastic about his work, and Bloomingdale's was so impressed that Miyake got a small section in the store. Kawamura, Yuniya. "Miyake, Issey." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . Kawamura, Yuniya. "Miyake, Issey." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . Miyake is best known for his original fabrics. He collaborates with his textile director, Makiko Minagawa, who interprets his abstract ideas. With Minagawa and the Japanese textile mills, he introduced his most commercially successful collection, Pleats Please, in 1993. Traditionally, pleats are permanently pressed before a garment is cut, but he did it the other way round. He cut and assembled a garment two-and-a-half to three times its proper size. Then he folded, ironed, and oversewed the material so that the straight lines remained in place. Finally the garment was placed in a press between two sheets of paper, from which it emerged with permanent pleats.Kawamura, Yuniya. "Miyake, Issey." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . Miyake has said, "I do not create a fashionable aesthetic … I create a style based on life" (Mendes and de la Haye 1999, p. 233). He is opposed to the words "haute couture," "mode," and "fashion," because they imply a quest for novelty; over the course of his career, he stretched the boundaries of fashion, reshaped the symmetry of clothes, let wrapped garments respond to the body's shape and movement, and destroyed all previous definition of clothing and fashion. It was Miyake who set the stage for the Japanese look in the fashion establishment.The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . McNeil, Peter. "Fashion Designers." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . "Dress." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. .