Irving Penn: Vintage Prints from the Series "Earthly Bodies," 1949–1950, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, December 6 –January 19, 1991. Irving Penn: Le Noir et Blanc légitimé, Galerie Thierry Marlat, Paris, November 3, 2011–January 12, 2012. Malcom, Janet. Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography. Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.

Make me a fabric that looks like poison.’ This is what Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake apparently once instructed his textile engineer, Makiko Minagawa. Miyake’s idea of fashion was often beautiful and always technically challenging. Over a career spanning four decades, his work would demonstrate an extraordinarily virtuosic range, from red plastic moulded bustiers with flirtatiously flared peplums to colour faded menswear drawing on shibori, a traditional Japanese tie-dye technique. He designed multicoloured flying saucer dresses that could be compressed like paper lanterns to fit into a suitcase and tubular industrial knits that the wearer could cut to size along a dotted line. Most importantly, perhaps, Miyake pioneered an innovative method of heat-pressed pleating that would become his distinctive fashion signature. His clothes were joyful and the news of his death, aged 84, marks the loss of a great twentieth-century fashion visionary. In 1973, he began to show in Paris, distinctively different from other Japanese designers arriving there. His regular collections of sculptured, high-end clothes were spectacular, but the real fun came with a change of focus to volume production ready-to-wear lines through the 1990s. They brought him nearer his ideal, unfashiony customers.

What is Modern Photography, from A Symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, November 20, 1950." American Photography 45 (March 1951): 146–57. Shape of Light: Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, September 20–December 15, 2019. (Catalogue) Irving Penn: New and Unseen. Process. Pace/MacGill Gallery and Pace Wildenstein Gallery. New York, 1999. Coleman, A.D. Light Readings: A Photography Critic's Writings 1968–1978. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979: 261–65. Jodidio, Philip. "No. 500 (Twenty artists and architects each contribute a recent work to the 500th issue of Connaissance des Arts)." Connaissance des Arts no. 500 (November 1993): 68–97.

Despite the fact Miyake never attended the photo sessions by Penn (nor did Penn ever go to any of Miyake’s shows) – there is an incredible visual conversation that arose between the two artists due to the complete artistic freedom afforded to Penn. The sculptural quality of Miyake’s work is boldly captured in his images – a furrow of pleats transforms a woman into an elegant slinky, or a coat is inflated like an oversize balloon. In fact, Penn noted in the introduction to his 1988 monograph, Issey Miyake: Photographs By Irving Penn: “His designs are not fashionable, but women of style are enriched by them and are made more beautiful by them.” Hambourg, Maria Morris and Irving Penn. Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn’s Nudes, 1949-50 (exhibition catalogue). Boston: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Little, Brown and Co., 2002. Drieshpoon, Douglas. "Irving Penn: 1948 (Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York)." Art News 91 (February 1992): 133. Arrowsmith, Alexandra, ed. Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn: Sculpture, Prints and Drawings. With introduction by Alexander Liberman. The Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn Trust, 1994. Dancer: 1999, Nudes by Irving Penn, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 17–June 16, 2002. Traveled to: as Irving Penn Nudes, Art Institute of Chicago, June 1–October 6, 2002; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, September 18–October 20, 2002.

Some label him an artist, others see him as a style visionary, but more than anything else, Issey Miyake is the designer’s designer. For more than four decades he has created textiles, clothing and accessories for people who embrace contemporary visual culture, but who find the notion of “fashion” at least slightly ludicrous. People, in fact, such as him. Sitting in a glass-walled corner room of his Shibuya design studio overlooking Yoyogi Park, and surrounded by immaculate postmodern vintage furniture by his late friend and collaborator Shiro Kuramata, he explains his credo. “I prefer the term ‘making things’,” he says. “I want to represent the action of thinking. We are working towards the concept of […] no fashion.” Masters of the Camera: Stieglitz, Steichen and Their Successors, organized by the American Federation of Arts, International Center of Photography, New York, November 14,1976–January 2, 1977. Traveled to: Winnipeg Art Gallery, May 6–June 18,1978. Still Life: Irving Penn Photographs 1938–2000. With introduction by John Szarkowski. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2001.