Apple made a surprising announcement Tuesday morning: It’s decided to partner with Japanese fashion house ISSEY MIYAKE to launch the iPhone Pocket, a limited-edition accessory that carries the creative vision of design director Yoshiyuki Miyamae, who helmed the label’s womenswear line from 2011 to 2019. The collaboration marks a return to a relationship between the two companies that stretches back decades, when the design house’s founder Issey Miyake created the black mock turtlenecks that became synonymous with late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
The iPhone Pocket, launching Friday, November 14, features what Apple and ISSEY MIYAKE describe as a “singular 3D-knitted construction” inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth.” The stretchy, ribbed accessory fully encloses an iPhone while allowing users to glimpse their screen through its open textile when stretched. It can be worn handheld, tied to bags, or worn directly on the body, expanding to fit phones, AirPods, and other everyday items.
The design draws on A-POC (A Piece of Cloth), an innovative manufacturing system established by Issey Miyake in 1998 that produces garments from a single 3D-knit piece of fabric. Miyamae, who now leads A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE, a brand launched in 2021 that operates outside traditional seasonal fashion constraints, said the iPhone Pocket explores “the concept of ‘the joy of wearing iPhone in your own way.’”
Apple
“The design of iPhone Pocket speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user, while keeping in mind that an Apple product is designed to be universal in aesthetic and versatile in use,” Miyamae said in Apple’s announcement. “The simplicity of its design echoes what we practice at ISSEY MIYAKE — the idea of leaving things less defined to allow for possibilities and personal interpretation.”
The accessory comes in two versions. The short strap design retails for $149.95 and is available in lemon, mandarin, purple, pink, peacock, sapphire, cinnamon, and black. The long strap design, priced at $229.95, comes in sapphire, cinnamon, and black. Both designs are crafted in Japan and are compatible with any iPhone model. Molly Anderson, Apple’s VP of industrial design, said the “color palette of iPhone Pocket was intentionally designed to mix and match with all our iPhone models and colors.
The history between Apple, Issey Miyake, and Steve Jobs
The collaboration carries particular resonance given the historical connection between Jobs and Issey Miyake. In the 1980s, Jobs visited Sony and admired the company uniforms that Miyake had designed—a taupe nylon jacket with removable sleeves that could convert into a vest. Jobs approached Miyake to create a similar vest for Apple employees, but the idea was “booed off the stage” when he presented it to staff.
However, the interaction sparked a friendship between the two men. “So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them,” Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson, adding it was enough to last him the rest of his life. Those black mock turtlenecks, paired with Levi’s 501 jeans, became Jobs’ personal uniform and helped make him one the world’s most recognizable CEOs.
Issey Miyake, born in Hiroshima in 1938, founded the Miyake Design Studio in 1970 after studying graphic design at Tama Art University and training in Paris with designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy. He became known for technology-driven clothing designs and pioneered the pleating technique that became his signature, launching the Pleats Please line in 1993. Miyake stepped back from designing the main ISSEY MIYAKE collections in 1999 to focus on research, eventually establishing the Miyake Issey Foundation in 2004 to support next-generation creatives. Miyake died in August 2022 at age 84 after battling liver cancer.
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