ISSEY MIYAKE PARFUMS: Water, Nature, and the Scent of Hope

“Design must express hope. Design does not exist as a slave to an industry that keeps changing models solely to sell products. It must fundamentally question what human beings should be now and create the future. It must give people surprise and joy.”
── Issey Miyake​

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Basic Information

• Brand name: ISSEY MIYAKE PARFUMS
• Founded: 1970 (fragrance business since 1992)
• Founder: Issey Miyake​
• Born–died: April 22, 1938 – August 5, 2022
• Fragrance development partner: Beauté Prestige International (Shiseido Group EMEA)
• Official websites: ISSEY MIYAKE PARFUMS / MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO

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The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

A Boy in Hiroshima Finds Hope in Design

Issey Miyake was born on April 22, 1938, in Hiroshima. At seven, he experienced the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945. His mother died of radiation sickness three years after the bombing, and Miyake himself developed an inflammatory bone disease that left him walking with a limp in one leg thereafter.

For a long time, Miyake avoided speaking to the media about this experience because he did not want to be labeled “the designer who survived the atomic bomb.” In 2009, however, moved by then-President Barack Obama’s speech in Prague calling for nuclear disarmament, he contributed an opinion piece entitled “A Flash of Memory” to The New York Times. It was the first time he publicly discussed his experience of the bombing.

“When I close my eyes, I can still see things no one should ever experience. A red flash, the black cloud immediately afterward, people desperately trying to flee in every direction. I remember it all. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure. I have tried to seal away these memories. I have not succeeded, but I have chosen to think about what can be created, what brings beauty and joy, rather than what is destroyed. I was drawn to clothing design because it was a modern, optimistic form of creation.”
── Issey Miyake, “A Flash of Memory,” The New York Times, July 14, 2009​

A decisive influence on Miyake as a boy was a pair of bridges near Hiroshima’s hypocenter. These were the Peace Bridge and West Peace Bridge, designed by American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Each time he saw their organic, sun-shaped railings on his way to school, the boy reportedly “felt hope in the power of design.”

To Paris: A Turn Toward “Clothes for Many People”

Miyake wanted to become a dancer as a child, but reading his sister’s fashion magazines sparked an interest in design. He studied graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1965. Immediately afterward, he went to Paris and enrolled at L’École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the haute couture trade association’s school. Japanese designers were still virtually unknown in Paris at the time, but Miyake worked as an assistant to the French fashion veteran Guy Laroche, then trained in Hubert de Givenchy’s atelier, producing between 50 and 100 sketches every day.

The turning point came in May 1968. Shocked by the May uprising in Paris, when students took to the streets to challenge the establishment, Miyake decided “to make clothes for many people, rather than for the wealthy.”

“After experiencing the events of May in Paris, I came to want to make clothes for many people, not just a few.”
── Issey Miyake (from his official website)​

From New York to Tokyo: Establishing the Studio

In 1969, Miyake moved to New York, where he gained experience in ready-to-wear with American designer Geoffrey Beene. During this period, he also met artists such as Christo and Robert Rauschenberg, broadening his perspective beyond the boundaries between fashion and art.​

But sensing Japan’s growing momentum ahead of Expo ’70 in Osaka, Miyake decided to return home. In April 1970, he established MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO in Tokyo. He presented his first overseas collection in New York the following year, in 1971, and participated in the Paris collections for the first time in 1973. He would continue to shake up the Western fashion world as one of Japan’s “Big Three,” alongside Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) and Yohji Yamamoto.

From “A Piece of Cloth” to Pleats: A History of Innovation

At the core of Miyake’s design philosophy is the idea of “A Piece of Cloth.” Unconstrained by traditional Western approaches to cutting and sewing, he continued to explore the relationship of ease and space that arises between a single piece of cloth and the body. Paper, plastic, rope, woven grass: he used one unconventional material after another, overturning fashion conventions through pleats, wrinkles, and draping.

In 1988, Miyake began experimenting seriously with pleats. In 1993, he introduced PLEATS PLEASE ISSEY MIYAKE as a brand. Created through a proprietary heat-treatment process, these innovative pleats did not disappear even after washing, distinguishing them from the Fortuny pleats of the early twentieth century.

In 1999, he commercialized A-POC (A Piece of Cloth), developed jointly with textile specialist Dai Fujiwara. He refused to give his own name to this revolutionary project, in which an entire garment is born from a single thread, because for Miyake it was the culmination of teamwork rather than an individual creation.​

Entering the Fragrance Business: The Idea of “Water”

Alongside these innovations in clothing, Miyake entered the world of fragrance in the early 1990s. He chose as his partner Beauté Prestige International (BPI), the Shiseido Group’s French subsidiary. Since its establishment in 1990, BPI has worked on designer fragrances such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Narciso Rodriguez. Its collaboration with Miyake led to the landmark first fragrance, L’EAU D’ISSEY, in March 1992.

“Water”: for Miyake, it was the greatest source of inspiration and the greatest material. The name L’Eau d’Issey means “Issey’s water” in French, while also possessing a witty ring that evokes “L’Odyssée,” or an odyssey, a journey of adventure.

To bring this grand vision to life, Miyake entrusted it to perfumer Jacques Cavallier, then at Firmenich and now Louis Vuitton’s in-house perfumer. Miyake presented Cavallier with an unprecedented request.

“I want a perfume that does not smell of perfume. I want a perfume that smells of water.”
── Issey Miyake (in his briefing to Jacques Cavallier)​

Cavallier later recalled it this way.

“Issey Miyake originally told me he wanted to put the smell of water, or the idea of water, into a bottle, because water is so important in Japanese rituals and cleanliness. But pure water has no smell. So I thought about Japan. I visited Japan for several weeks and thought about its delicacy, sophistication, and the depth of its culture, and even its cruelty. About the food, nature, and what water represents there. About the trees, osmanthus, and peonies…”
── Jacques Cavallier​

There was another important inspiration Miyake shared with Cavallier: the Japanese custom of shōbuyu, or sweet-flag baths. In this traditional practice, people bathe with sweet-flag leaves floating in the water on Children’s Day, May 5. Their delicate fragrance was one of Miyake’s unforgettable memories.​

Cavallier devised a formula entirely without precedent at the time. For the first time in a women’s fragrance, he used a large quantity of the synthetic molecule Calone. Calone embodies every aspect of water, its coolness, undulation, and the scent of a sea breeze, giving off a transparent aroma reminiscent of melon and cucumber. Cavallier used it like a substantial drop of morning dew, juxtaposing rose petals beloved in the West with the lotus of the East, then adding a breath of white flowers and a green accent.

“You know, it is like girls. You never forget the first one. And my first perfume was Eau d’Issey. It was a major turning point in my creative work. Every time I smell it, I am still filled with emotion.”
── Jacques Cavallier​

In 1993, L’Eau d’Issey won the top women’s fragrance prize at France’s Fragrance Foundation Awards, the FiFi Awards. It also won best packaging at Italy’s Accademia del Profumo, and entered the FiFi Awards’ Hall of Fame in 2011. Its success marked the dawn of a new fragrance genre known as “aquatic,” profoundly influencing the wave of aquatic fragrances that swept the 1990s, including Giorgio Armani’s Acqua di Giò and Calvin Klein’s CK One.

His Later Years and Legacy

On August 5, 2022, Issey Miyake died of liver cancer in Tokyo at the age of 84. Midori Kitamura, chair of MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO, had been involved in Miyake’s creative work for at least 50 years, including fragrance development since the 1980s. Kitamura conveyed Miyake’s words as follows.​

“Miyake said this of all his creations, not only his clothes but his perfumes too: ‘I believe there is hope in design. Design evokes surprise and joy in people.’ Based on this concept, we will continue to pursue perfumes with timeless value, unlike anything seen before.”
── Midori Kitamura (Chair, MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO)​

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The Brand’s Commitments

The Philosophy of Fragrance: “Nature Is the Greatest Perfumer”

The official ISSEY MIYAKE PARFUMS website sets out the brand’s philosophy: “Nature is the greatest perfumer.” MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO handles creative direction at every stage, from defining the fragrance concept through bottle design, naming, graphics, packaging, marketing, and PR. In other words, rather than the “licensing business” of conventional designer fragrances in which only a name is lent, it maintains an approach of controlling every detail of its brand universe itself.

Miyake’s consistent concept for fragrance development can be summarized as follows.

• A fragrance that communicates a message
• A sense of hope and the future
• Simple, functional bottle design
• Something that possesses everyday relevance and universality, while also inspiring surprise​

As in clothing design, it upholds a “pursuit of the essential,” continually proposing fragrances that begin with the power of nature.

Bottle Design: A Full Moon Above the Eiffel Tower

The L’Eau d’Issey bottle was designed by Issey Miyake himself with Fabien Baron and Alain de Mourgues. The inspiration came one night during Miyake’s stay in Paris, when he saw the full moon shining above the top of the Eiffel Tower. An unadorned conical silhouette, a crystal-like spherical cap, and matte-finished steel: embodying “essential beauty,” its form has become a landmark of perfume bottle design.

In fact, Miyake initially commissioned his close friend, interior designer Shiro Kuramata, to design the bottle. In 1990, Kuramata created several poetic and innovative prototypes, including an acrylic cube enclosing a spherical cavity. The technology of the time made mass production impossible, however, and the project stalled. Even after Kuramata’s sudden death in 1991, Miyake held on to the idea, and advances in laser technology finally enabled its limited release in 2008 as L’EAU D’ISSEY EDITION SHIRO KURAMATA.

The men’s L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme bottle, designed by Issey Miyake and Fabien Baron, adopts a powerful cylindrical form. For Le Sel d’Issey, released in 2024, bottle design was entrusted to Tokujin Yoshioka, a collaborator of at least 30 years. Its solid oval glass refracts light to illuminate the liquid, creating a sculptural form on the themes of “salt” and “water.”

“This was the first perfume bottle project Mr. Miyake asked me to undertake directly, and also the last project he spoke to me about directly, in a telephone call in spring 2022. I vividly remember the launch of L’Eau d’Issey. I sensed something different, something very Japanese rather than European. This time, I wanted to make something very simple and pure. And something sacred, something that gives you energy when you wear it.”
── Tokujin Yoshioka​

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The Fragrance Lineup

The fragrances that grew from L’Eau d’Issey include works that retain its name while exploring different expressions of water, as well as lines with new subjects such as fire, night, a drop, salt, and light. The two founding collections are followed here by representative fragrances with names of their own. The dates mark the beginnings of each line, distinguishing them from later concentrations and variations.

The L’EAU D’ISSEY Collection (Women)

L’EAU D’ISSEY (1992) is Jacques Cavallier’s translation of the idea of water into a floral fragrance. Rose and lotus accords lead into white flowers, including lily, and a base that includes sandalwood and amber. The structure combines flowers that convey transparency with the warmth of woods that remain on the skin. The eau de toilette and the eau de parfum, which gives greater weight to lily and sunlit floral impressions, each have a distinct character.

For L’EAU D’ISSEY PURE (the 2016 eau de parfum), Dominique Ropion approached the theme of water through a different fragrance structure. He explained that he placed an ambergris note and Maritima, a material that evokes a sea breeze, at its center, surrounding them with jasmine, lily of the valley, and rose. He sought the sensation of water-laden petals, with Cashmeran lending a soft woody texture to the base. Rather than simply making the original lighter, he reworked the relationship between a marine core and layers of flowers.

Todd Bracher designed the Pure bottle. He retained L’Eau d’Issey’s elongated outline while moving the sphere from its tip to the base, like a drop of water. The reinterpretation extends beyond the fragrance to decisions about which parts of the original form to preserve and which to move.

The L’EAU D’ISSEY POUR HOMME Collection (Men)

L’EAU D’ISSEY POUR HOMME (1994) was also composed by Jacques Cavallier. Taking the purity and strength of spring water as its subject, he chose a combination of citrus and woods distinct from the women’s original. Its characteristic yuzu is layered with mandarin and other citrus notes, leading into the waterside floral impression of water lily. Beneath them, spices including nutmeg, together with sandalwood and vetiver, create a warm layer within the cool freshness.

Although water is their shared starting point, L’Eau d’Issey’s rose and lotus and pour Homme’s yuzu and spices give each a different identity. Nuit d’Issey and Le Sel d’Issey, discussed below, are not simply more concentrated versions of pour Homme. These men’s lines take night and salt as their respective subjects, developing new fragrance compositions.

Other Noteworthy Lines

Le Feu d’Issey (1998)
After water, Jacques Cavallier composed a fragrance named for fire. Notes recalling milk and caramel are combined with coriander, rose, and woods such as mahogany. The milky texture layered over flowers and woods differs markedly from L’Eau d’Issey’s transparent expression of water. It belongs here as an earlier experiment in the brand’s history, separate from its current mainstays.

A Scent by Issey Miyake (2009)
Daphné Bugey’s green floral combines hyacinth, galbanum, verbena, and jasmine. Its development returned to the basic elements that make up a perfume: scent, bottle, name, and box. Arik Levy designed the bottle to resemble a slice cut from a block of glass. The front outline remains the same across sizes, while differences in capacity are expressed through the depth of the glass. The concise approach to composing the fragrance extends to the construction of its container.

Pleats Please (the 2012 eau de toilette)
While other lines begin with scenes from nature, Pleats Please brings the colors and movement of clothing into fragrance. The first images perfumer Aurélien Guichard received showed a woman laughing and looking up at the sky, along with fabric and color. He recalled that he did not yet know the project was Pleats Please and was considering how to express joy and brightness through scent.

Guichard recalled that the colors needed to be vivid. He chose the fruitiness of pear for the fabric’s colors, peony for petals, and patchouli and cedarwood for movement, adding comfort through vanilla and musk. Over roughly a year and more than 1,000 trials, he said, the adjustments focused on the quality and quantity of materials rather than repeatedly changing the fragrance’s direction. Instead of directly translating the structure of pleated clothing into aromatic materials, he composed its colors, movement, and the pleasure of wearing it as distinct elements.

NUIT D’ISSEY (2014)
Dominique Ropion and Loc Dong collaborated on this men’s fragrance. Rather than depicting night solely through a heavy, dark scent, they brought the brightness of bergamot and grapefruit into leather, black pepper, woods, and vetiver. Tonka bean rounds out a base of patchouli and incense. They described their intention as bringing light into the night. The bottle’s outline, derived from pour Homme, also takes on a nocturnal character through gradations of black and its surface finish.

FUSION D’ISSEY (2020)
Nathalie Lorson took the meeting of cold water and hot magma as the subject of this line. Coconut’s milky softness surrounds the sharp brightness of lemon, leading into sandalwood and an accord that evokes sun-warmed minerals. Patchouli carries the image of a volcanic forest. The composition sets freshness against warmth, a contrast also expressed in the blue glass and the faceted black cap reminiscent of obsidian.

A DROP D’ISSEY (2021)
Perfumer Ane Ayo expressed a drop falling from a lilac petal through a combination of a lilac accord, orange blossom, and almond milk. The fragrance emphasizes the soft textures of flowers and milk alongside water’s freshness. Todd Bracher designed the round bottle to lie flat rather than stand upright, and to be cradled in the hand. His intention was to create an intimate relationship with the hand. In 2022, it received the women’s bottle design award from the French Fragrance Foundation.

The eau de parfum Fraîche variation retains the lilac accord, combining it with a rain accord and Damask rose. Here, lilac is a scent constructed through perfumery rather than an essential oil extracted from the flower. Keeping the same flower at its center, the variation changes the impression of air and water around the drop.

LE SEL D’ISSEY (2024)
Quentin Bisch created this men’s line around salt, a subject that had interested Miyake. Developed thirty years after pour Homme, it called for a fragrance that would neither repeat the original nor ignore its presence. Since salt itself has no smell, Bisch took his cue from the moment a wave recedes and sea gives way to land.

Bisch described salt as the memory waves leave on the earth and skin. He constructed the marine side with an extract of the brown seaweed Laminaria digitata and oakmoss, and the landward side with materials including vetiver and cedarwood. Through the contrast between woods and mineral impressions, he sought a sense of continuous movement in the fragrance. Tokujin Yoshioka’s transparent bottle was created as a vessel for this interpretation of salt.

LUMIÈRE D’ISSEY (2026)
Fabrice Pellegrin and Marie Salamagne created this line around the idea of wearing light. A bright opening of green mandarin and neroli leads to orange blossom, with a pistachio wood accord and sandalwood leaving a warm impression. As Pellegrin explained, “The aim was to evoke a smile right from the first hint.” The bottle’s triangular facets reflect and refract light, giving visual form to the same theme.

Incidentally…

• Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck: Another achievement that made Issey Miyake’s name known around the world was the iconic black turtleneck of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Visiting Japan in the 1980s, Jobs was impressed to see all the employees at a Sony factory wearing uniforms, and asked Miyake to design a vest for Apple staff. The employees vehemently opposed it, however, and the uniform plan fell through. Instead, Jobs asked Miyake to “make black turtlenecks for me” and obtained about 100 of them. Jobs recalled it this way.​
• “L’Eau d’Issey” is a pun on “a journey of adventure.” Meaning “Issey’s water” in French, L’Eau d’Issey sounds almost the same as “L’Odyssée,” or “the Odyssey,” when spoken. Evoking the ancient Greek epic, the name was a beautiful play on words suggesting the beginning of Issey Miyake’s “fragrance odyssey.”
• Shiro Kuramata’s unrealized bottle: As noted above, interior designer Shiro Kuramata was originally commissioned to design the L’Eau d’Issey bottle. He proposed poetic visions such as “a giant drop of water” and “a condensed Earth where flowers, dreams, light, wind, men, and women dance a rondo.” Impossible to realize with the industrial technology of the time, the design finally came to fruition nearly 20 years later, thanks to advances in laser technology, in a limited edition of 2,500 bottles in 2008. With a perfect sphere hollowed out inside a glass cube, the bottle is topped by a turquoise-blue cap reminiscent of Kuramata’s affinity for Memphis.

“I asked Issey to make me some of the black turtlenecks I liked, and he made me about a hundred.”
── Steve Jobs (from Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson)​