I wandered by the Issey Miyake store the other day and was drawn inside to look at the wonderful clothes. I walked around imagining myself in strangely beautiful outfits, and a tall salesman named Jeremiah came over. “How do you like the collection?” he asked. “I love it, totally beautiful” I said. “And the music. What are we listening to?”

“Oh that’s called Supreme Balloon by Matmos, it’s 25 minutes long, made without the use of microphones – completely digitally, no traditional instruments…It’s very meditative.”

…So, from clothes we jumped into music.”What other music do you like?” I asked always eager for a musical hot-tip. “I love White Bird Release by Pan.American. Someone did a study and found that when people listened to it, their blood pressure went down. The titles of the songs on the album are made up of a beautiful quote that Dr. Robert Godard, the brilliant rocket scientist, wrote in a letter to H.G. Wells“.  Jeremiah called the words up from his memory bank:

There Can B No Thought of Finishing,

For ‘Aiming at the Stars’

Both Literally and Figuratively

Is A Problem to Occupy Generations,

So That No Matter How Much Progress One Makes,

There’s Always the Thrill of Just Beginning


Wow, what a thing to find in a store!

I took the beautiful quote with me, and downloaded the music later that day…

PS: Jeremiah told me that, at the showing of this season’s Issey Miyake collection, they played Roy Orbison…

You can check out the Issey Miyake fall collection here (the first half is with Roy)…

Irving Penn loved to photograph Miyake’s clothes and his photographs have been collected in the book Irving Penn Regards the Work of Issey Miyake: Photographs 1975-1998

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2 replies on “serendipity (free) at issey miyake

  1. The clothes are gorgeous and weird and wonderful. I clicked on the link for Supreme Balloon but believe it would cause my blood pressure to go UP if I listened to it for 24 minutes! The Roy Orbison, on the other hand, makes me swoon —

  2. I neglected to mention that the sample of Supreme Balloon doesn’t give a sense of it at all; those first 30 seconds they were just working their way in. I wonder if you could hear the whole thing on Pandora…

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