Fashion comes to Columbus today to celebrate the creativity and beyond-explanation designs of Issey Miyake, the nationally renowned clothing designer, who will receive the 11th Wexner Prize.

Beginning in 1992 Leslie Wexner, chairman of the Wexner Center Foundation Board of Trustees and founder of Limited Brands, has presented a $50,000 prize to a major contemporary artist who has in some way gone beyond the art world’s boundaries and has continuously created innovative and leading work within his or her field.

Miyake is the first to receive this honorable award within the clothing design field. Among the past recipients of the Wexner Prize is theater director Peter Brook, composer, musician, and choreographer John Cage, filmmaker Martin Scorsese and Renzo Piano, an architect.

Miyake was chosen as an artist who exemplifies not only talent, but the ability to create new and revolutionizing work time and time again.

“He goes beyond the traditional boundaries of design in both the product design and his style of contemporary art, and that is why he deserves this prize,” said Karen Simonian, communications manager for the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Miyake graduated from the Tama Art University in Tokyo with a degree in graphic arts and soon thereafter went to Paris to continue his studies. The now-famous designer first began his brilliance in Paris when he decided to make clothing for ‘people in the streets,’ following the student riots he observed in the late 1960s.

Throughout the 1970s, Miyake established his own studio after returning to Tokyo, where he soon began designing the unexpected.

“His work is constantly innovative, and he’s always exploring new ways to express his ideas,” said Gayle Strege, curator of textiles and clothing’s historic collection department at Ohio State. “He doesn’t seem confined to what clothing ‘should’ be.”

“Miyake is timeless,” said Charles Kleibacker, adjunct curator of design at the Columbus Museum of Art and past designer in residence at OSU. “He thinks about the people and not the icon or the fame.”

Some of Miyake’s best-known work includes the 1993 Pleats Please line, which provided a modern look for a universal market. The Pleats Please, however, was just the beginning of his creative surge.

Today, Miyake’s fans are raving about A Piece Of Cloth, which includes no cutting or sewing in the fabric. A-POC was designed to encourage wearers to individually cut and design the fabric as they wish, forming an easy-to-wear ensemble that suits their own personal liking. A-POC has become Miyake’s most successful line both in pricing and within his own designing goals.

“A-POC unleashes the freedom of imagination,” Miyake said in the July 2002 edition of Newsweek Magazine. “It’s for people who are curious, who have inner energy – the energy of life and living.”

To most, Miyake’s work is inexplicable and viewed as simply impossible, but once again, Miyake has impressed the world, using technology to go above the everyday standard.

Miyake has been an influential designer for nearly three decades now, overindulging in the endless brilliant ideas he has materialized. From snaps, pleats and no seams, he has repeatedly amazed artists around the world.

“Miyake has helped introduce fashion as an actual art form,” Kleibacker said. “The man knows talent and has created just that.”

These brilliant fashion design lines by Miyake, including his Pleats Please, can be purchased at stores in the Columbus area such as Leal in the Arlington area and Saks Fifth Avenue, located in the Polaris Fashion Place.

“Each recipient of the Wexner Prize has been an established artist who represents everything the Wexner Center stands for,” Simonian said. “Miyake has proved to everyone everywhere that he is a bold thinker through his inventions, new fabrics and use of technology.”

On Sunday, Harold Koda, author and curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gave a welcoming talk on Miyake entitled “Issey Miyake: Subverting Fashion.” The Wexner Center will hold a private award ceremony for Miyake as he visits today.

The Wexner Center gallery will be hosting an opportunity for all to see Miyake’s work through photos, some works on display and a video presentation. The gallery will be open to the public on weekdays starting today through May 28.