Tomokazu Matsuyama (hereafter, Matsuyama): This project began when I approached Miyamae-san with the idea: “Would you like to create something together?” — this was in the lead-up to my exhibition “FIRST LAST” at the Azabudai Hills Gallery in spring 2025.

At the core of my work is the idea of traversing different contexts and reconstructing them into a single world. I fuse complex elements — cultures from across time and place, the figurative and the abstract, and many images and values that overflow in our information-driven society — into one cohesive work. Behind this creative approach lies the sampling culture of the 1990s, which greatly influenced my generation. In music, for example, sampling culture involves quoting parts of existing tracks or recordings, rearranging them with respect, and generating new forms of expression. In my own life, I often encounter everyday moments, social phenomena, or outstanding works of expression and feel something stir within me — “What is this?” or “There’s something about this that draws me in.” It is through the chain of digging deeper into those feelings, interpreting them, and reconstructing them that I have built up a body of work.

Looking back at the history of Issey Miyake through that point of view, I see a legacy of exploring making things through collaboration with people from different fields. With that context in mind, I felt I wanted to work together with the team at A-POC ABLE.

Yoshiyuki Miyamae (hereafter Miyamae): Even before the project began, I had been deeply moved by Matsuyama-san’s work. His pieces are characterized by vibrant color and a grand scale that stops you in your tracks the moment you see them, while also being depicted with meticulous detail. At the same time, questions about social issues and religious themes are woven throughout the works. Because of this, the impression a piece makes can shift depending on the viewer or the circumstances they find themselves in at that moment. I felt there was a multi-layered appeal to that. I was very eager to explore what kind of expression might emerge when Matsuyama-san’s work was brought together with A-POC ABLE’s approach to making — and discovering that potential held great meaning for us as well.

Following the warm reception of the project “TYPE-XII Tomokazu Matsuyama project” unveiled at Matsuyama-san's spring 2025 exhibition “FIRST LAST”, new items will be announced in summer 2026, alongside a special installation-style exhibition at “ISSEY MIYAKE / NEW YORK” and the adjoining gallery space “MADO.” With that in mind, there is something I would like to ask Matsuyama-san again. You have been based in New York for over 20 years — how do you feel that has influenced your creative practice?

Matsuyama: When I first started practicing art in New York, I did not want to foreground my Japanese identity directly. Instead, I was thinking about how to express broader social issues from the position of an Asian person living as a minority in American society.

A turning point came when I realized that for me — having been raised by a father who was a pastor — Christianity existed not so much as subject matter borrowed from the West, but as something closer to an innate, embodied understanding. From that point on, I began layering the visual language of Christianity with cultures from East and West and with contemporary imagery, examining the divisions created by religion and politics from my own perspective — as a Japanese person, and as an Asian minority in American society.

I believe art has a role similar to what you might call “mark-making” — inscribing the existence and voices of those of us living in this era into society. I think that by working in New York, I learned how to embrace my own background and open myself outward toward society.

Miyamae: I feel that Matsuyama-san, while positioning himself within the context of Western art, engages with the history and concepts rooted in that tradition from a contemporary sensibility, and reinterprets them in his own way.

We at Issey Miyake have similarly grappled with clothing — something shaped by the long lineage of Western fashion. Within that, Miyake sought to question the very essence of what clothing can be, through his original philosophy of “a piece of cloth.” He explored the space born between the body and the garment, the possibilities held within materials, and the structure through which a flat surface transforms into three dimensions. By exploring these things and from a perspective distinct from conventional garment-making that drapes fabric along the body, he opened up new possibilities for clothing that carries a universality unbounded by Eastern or Western concepts.

Though our fields differ, I sense a resonance between Matsuyama-san’s approach to making and our own. Having actually worked together, how did it feel from your side?

Matsuyama: Before meeting the team at A-POC ABLE, I was not necessarily open to having my work adapted or repurposed. My concern was that the work might be reduced to a symbol, with the emphasis shifting toward reproduction. However, when I looked at A-POC ABLE’s past projects, I saw that they had rendered the art of Yokoo Tadanori in extraordinarily complex ways using jacquard techniques. From that, it came clearly that their work was focused not merely on the act of wearing, but on the aesthetic sensibility of wearing, and on the uniqueness and depth of thought that a work of art carries. With that as a backdrop, I had approached them with the modest hope that perhaps they might make a T-shirt.

To my surprise, the very first sample they showed me was a coat. I will never forget that meeting. I visited the Issey Miyake studio not quite knowing what to expect, and it was as if I had walked into an exhibition space — images from my work spread out across the room as large-scale textiles, and amid them, a sample coat was displayed. The sight made my heart leap and powerfully stirred my creative spirit. An idea I had thrown out had grown into something I could never have imagined. I felt as though I was rediscovering what collaboration is truly meant to be.

Miyamae: 　My foremost thought was to surprise Matsuyama-san and delight him. At the same time, I wanted our approach to making to be grounded in the context of A-POC ABLE.

As we considered how to express the power of Matsuyama-san’s work through clothing, we found ourselves wanting to explore possibilities beyond a T-shirt. And so the form of expression we chose was a coat. A coat has a large surface area of fabric that envelops the body, as well as a generous and open structure. By making use of that expansive surface, we felt it would be able to fully receive and hold the painterly elements of Matsuyama-san's work.

Matsuyama: When I came face to face with A-POC ABLE’s 150-centimeter textile onto which my work had been transferred, the philosophy of “a piece of cloth” inherited from Miyake-san came through to me as a physical, bodily sensation. Transforming something two-dimensional into something three-dimensional — by experiencing that process firsthand, something shifted within me as well. It felt less like transferring a painting onto a single piece of cloth, and more like co-creating a sculpture to be worn. From that point on, things became truly exciting. New ideas began emerging one after another as I worked them into the pattern, and before I knew it, I had created 70 proposals.

Miyamae: When we received word from Matsuyama-san that he had come up with 70 proposals, this time it was we who were taken by surprise. For the exhibition at Azabudai Hills Gallery, we ultimately narrowed it down to 3 ideas, but what made us happiest of all was that Matsuyama-san had reconstructed his own works anew for this collaboration.

Bringing the Colors of a Painting to Life in Clothing

Nanae Takahashi (hereafter Takahashi): This collaboration also became an opportunity for us to advance our own techniques. After considering how best to express the vividness and rich color palette of Matsuyama-san’s work through clothing, we concluded that the most suitable approach was to apply color to a polyester fabric using inkjet printing.

Miyamae: This technology is actually something Takahashi has spent a long time developing. The theory had been established for nearly seven years, but realising it as a product presented many difficulties, and it had never reached commercialization. Even so, A-POC ABLE as a brand holds the stance of “taking time to research a single technology and staying with it until you are truly satisfied.”

Takahashi: When we made samples to see how far we could push things with the latest equipment, we discovered that inkjet technology had advanced dramatically over the past few years. We gained the confidence that we could now bring this to a product. When Matsuyama-san saw the samples and said, “I had no idea color could be expressed to this degree,” that encouraged us even further, and this technology finally made its way into the world.

Matsuyama: Hearing that now, I feel it all over again. The reason I came to trust A-POC ABLE’s engineering team is that they genuinely support creativity through technology. And moreover, that technology is not built on machinery alone — it is sustained by the hands of skilled craftspeople and the power of materials nurtured in Japan.

I have always thought about how to weave into my work the sensibilities I developed growing up in Japan. One of my approaches has been to place great emphasis on meticulous depiction and intricate composition. As a result, it sometimes takes me anywhere from six months to a year to complete a single piece. To people in America and elsewhere, this is quite unusual. I had concerns about how faithfully the delicate aspects of my work could be translated into another medium. But through the sincere and dedicated way the A-POC ABLE team engaged with their technology, I felt that not only was the original quality being preserved — new value was being born within my work.

Miyamae: It means a great deal to hear you say that.

Matsuyama: When I actually held the fabric of this coat in my hands, I found that even the reverse side had been carefully finished with geometric precision. The very first thing I felt when I put it on was a sense of weightlessness. In Western couture, a coat is typically a heavy garment. Yet this coat, despite its large boxy silhouette, has a lightness as if you are wearing paper. What struck me deeply was how meticulously A-POC ABLE’s engineering team had pursued every detail: the weight of the fabric, its lightness, even how it would look when worn.

Takahashi: For this piece, we layered a special triangular pattern over a base fabric vividly printed at a workshop in Kyoto. In doing so, we used a special resin that hardens when heat is applied, creating areas of hardened texture alongside areas that remain soft. Through this technique, the fabric is flat when laid on a surface, but when worn, the surface shifts and becomes three-dimensional in response to the body’s movement.

Miyamae: Takahashi exchanged many rounds of communication with the resin manufacturers as well, adjusting the formulation and its combination with the fabric, and verifying the results time and again. On a related note, when we visited Matsuyama-san's studio in New York, we witnessed him running test after test to arrive at a single color, refining his palette through layers of color studies. Searching for the right resin formulation, and building up color studies to arrive at the right palette — though the fields are different, I feel there is a shared spirit in the way both sides accumulate trial and error in pursuit of new forms of expression.

Manabu Nakatani: We have challenged ourselves in many ways in pursuit of a future yet unseen, but we have rarely had the opportunity to put that into words. When I speak with Matsuyama-san, there are moments when I feel as though things I have been quietly thinking about for a long time are being given language right before my eyes. In practice, this project marked the first time we worked together — and yet I feel, strangely, as though we have been making things side by side for much longer than that. I have come to feel that this collaboration was not born of coincidence, but of inevitability.

The Meaning of Creating as a Team

Takahashi: When we visited Matsuyama-san’s studio, I was also struck by how many people were involved in the work. There was a clear division between the research team and the production team, and I got the sense that the work emerges from within a well-established structure.

Matsuyama: At my studio, I have been working to build not only a production team, but also a team dedicated to the research and development that generates ideas for new works. If we can share methods of sampling and how we draw on popular culture, then ideas and proposals will begin to emerge from the team itself, rather than everyone simply waiting for my direction. The idea is not to “make Matsuyama’s work,” but for each person to engage with and take ownership of the work with the mindset that these are “works made by our studio.” I believe that beyond that lies something which I alone could never arrive at.

Miyamae: There is a parallel with A-POC ABLE. In our studio, the roles of team members shift from project to project. There are occasions like this one, where Takahashi takes the lead on design, and depending on the technology being used, we make sure to bring those who excel in that area into a central role.

Matsuyama: Through this project, that came through very clearly. Each person holds their own role, and yet it all ultimately converges into a single act of making that is A-POC ABLE. In that way of working, I sensed a sincerity, an integrity, and an openness toward their craft.

Miyamae: For us, the philosophy of “a piece of cloth” is always the place we return to. In the process of taking on new challenges, there are moments of uncertainty and walls we run up against. What we always return to is whether we have cleared every requirement — that the color does not fade in the wash, that the shape holds, and that it is comfortable to wear. Beyond that, we aim to create clothing that can be worn on the special occasions of everyday life.

Matsuyama: Through this collaboration, the philosophy of “a piece of cloth” and the multi-layered imagery of my work intersect, and rise together as a coat with a new structure — one that lives within fabric, body, and movement. I feel a deep sense of pride in that.

Miyamae: Beyond the experience of viewing Matsuyama-san’s work, there is the experience of wearing it. And through that, your awareness and sensibility shift little by little. I believe there is a power unique to clothing in that mode of reception, mediated through the body.

Matsuyama-san perceives things from many different angles and channels it firmly into his work. When you spend time with his pieces, you feel prompted to look again at existing values and entrenched assumptions through your own eyes. What each person takes away is entirely their own, and that is as it should be — and I hope that as many people as possible will come to feel the richness of this project, differences and all.

Matsuyama: I sometimes hear the phrase “creating tradition,” but I do not believe tradition is something you can set out to create intentionally. It is when the new values and expressions we give rise to in each moment are carried forward through time — renewed by technology and creativity — that they become tradition as a result.

Issey Miyake has a firm philosophy. Through this collaboration, I felt strongly that it has been passed down as living tradition, pulse by pulse. And yet within that tradition, there remains a space open to receiving new technologies and ways of thinking. I call this “fluctuation.” It is in the development of that “fluctuation” through the technologies of today that I sense A-POC ABLE’s spirit of innovation. I feel truly fortunate to have been part of that exploration.

Tomokazu Matsuyama
Artist. Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1976, based in Brooklyn. Working primarily in painting, he also creates sculpture and installation. In recent years he has held solo exhibitions at Azabudai Hills Gallery, the SCAD Museum of Art, and the Edward Hopper House. He has produced large-scale public art works, including for Times Square’s “Midnight Moment” in 2026 and the plaza in front of JR Shinjuku East Exit in 2020.