no 19

Have you accidentally looked into the sun or bright light, and then looked away, the image burned into your eyelids? That’s an afterimage.

The great Issey Miyake has passed. He’s known as one of the twentieth century’s greatest designers. He was also my first boss.

This week in Afterimage, I trace some personal archaeology, what remains with me today from my time working with him, and where it’s bringing me to, next.

Let’s begin.

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For a recent design student, nothing could have been more exciting in the mid-90s than arriving at the Miyake Design Studio: for design aficionados, IFYYK applies. If you’re not a fashion fan, welcome to an inside glimpse of where Steve Jobs’ black turtlenecks were born.

An aside: I scoured the internet for a portrait of Issey-san to post, and multiple variations of this photo taken by Brigitte Lacomb came up. It made me happy and somehow proud the image I chose is the official portrait. Maybe I still have the Miyake touch.

Today, I remember Issey-san as our sensei, or teacher/Master, and the studio he lead. His studio is for me, a School of Life. Read here to have a glimpse backstage of the studio in the mid 90s, and to help me honor Issey-san and his legacy. Fashionista or not, his work has likely touched you-- or a creative person you admire- in one way or another.

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Looking back

Obituaries and tributes, articles on fashion and its intersection with tech flooded my social media feed last week. Issey Miyake, one of the twentieth century’s greatest designers has passed.

What’s remarkable is that it’s twenty-two years since we were in the same room together, and yet the impact of my time in the studio is indelible. It’s shaped who I am today.

When this kind of introduction precedes articles and links, it signals an honoring and an homage. I’m in deep gratitude for the experiences I’ve had at the studio. It exposed me to some of the most brilliantly creative people who shaped our times and informed how we saw the world. It gave me access to witness the work process of these giants and how they did it. At the age of twenty-four, I was amongst the most privileged in the industry.

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I don’t belong

When I was accepted to the Studio, I was smart and insightful and had a good eye. A knack for recognizing random patterns and a keen ability to see a narrative emerge from a bunch of disjointed photographs. Decent writing. I had all of this, but working in fashion triggered a deep sense of never being good enough. Seeing it now makes me want to laugh and hug my tender twenty-something self, reminding her, “Ako. The people around you had decades to get to where they are. You’re just starting. Make those mistakes. Think about it as refining your process, and you’re good!”

I didn’t have the maturity to see it. The fierce competition in fashion gave me just enough signs to confirm and cement the belief I didn’t belong. This belief, the incredibly long hours, and the constant fear of being punished for saying or doing the wrong thing (very frequently and very common) lead to quick burnout.

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Safety First

Design in the fashion business is an upstream process in an industrial manufacturing process. In any manufacturing site, we see signs for safety everywhere. 安全第一: Safety First. Fashion is quite safety-minded in the factories we operated. But psychologically, it’s not very safety-minded, as an industry.

​Amy Edmondson, professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, defines psychological safety as

This was non-existent in the places I worked. And maybe not so much at home with OG Asian Tiger Parents.

Looking back on past work environments, I wondered what I could have done to create more safety for myself and others. What it means to take charge of not only my physical and creative health, but my mental health, as well. What does it mean to develop as a person?
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Where I am now

Today, I work with organizations to develop their leaders. I coach them. Recently, I’ve started to work with leaders to help them create higher levels of psychological safety in their teams.

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For a long time, I thought this is important to me because it serves my clients and gives them value. It offers organizations more connectivity. Leaders with coaching capabilities listen more and position themselves to switch gears between managing process/fixing problems, and creating followership and engagement despite uncertainty. They’re able to gather intel and see the bigger picture and are deft at crowdsourcing the solution. They become better collaborators and leaders.

All of this is true and vital to teamwork today. But something revealed itself this week, closer to where it hurts: my own contribution to threatening psychological safety in the places I’ve worked and led.

I hatched and imprinted under bosses who had achieved high levels of success through fear and force. So I copy and pasted, and did the same. Just as in family systems, I unwittingly had opted into perpetuating a chain of low safety, and unknowingly, quiet violence.

It took me massive upheaval in my personal life to rethink and reorganize the way I live and work. It was a redesign, in alignment to my values. Meditation, therapy, and coaching brought me out of the negative cycles in my life as a whole-- work included.

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Where I’m going

As for families and family members, there’s a way for organizations and people to exit the cycle of fear and low levels of psychological safety at work. We can learn by unlearning, trying on new behaviors individually, and fostering dialogue with each other.

Reading through the obituaries, I noticed something I took for granted. What I had walked into when I joined the studio was something Issey-san had created over years, despite all the odds stacked against him. It’s not so different from the insolence of children born into privilege (Also me). In a 2009 Opinion piece in the New York Times, Issey-san opened up about his experience as a survivor of Hiroshima, and his moral responsibility in advocating for peace.

At the end of the piece, he writes about “what humans do to one another out of hatred, and what could be a real and symbolic step toward creating a world that knows no fear [...]”

He goes on to say that every step taken is another step closer to peace.

While his piece was about the nuclear arms race and an opportunity for an American president to visit Hiroshima, what if we took his thought and asked ourselves:

• What are some things we do out of self-hatred or self-loathing?
• What about wars we wage against ourselves? What does that look like?
• What could be both a symbolic step and a measurable action to disarm ourselves of unnecessary fear?
• What emerges in the absence of fear, or how can we recognize fear that’s un/constructive?

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And what if it’s true, that every step we take for ourselves is another step closer to our own inner peace?

Building psychological safety is a peace-building process: peace with ourselves and peace with others.

Thank you, Issey-san. I felt like an ugly duckling when I was coming to the studio every day. I never imagined your tough love and advocacy for curiosity and joy would bring me to where I am today.

I’m forever grateful.

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