Irreverent, anticonformist, and against all stereotypes. Although Eiko Ishioka’s name doesn’t ring a bell to many, her work has been and is relevantly influential and impactful in cinema, fashion, and art. Her provocative vision enriched many visual projects from the late 1960s until her death in 2012.

Throughout her career, Eiko Ishioka has been an art director and a costume and graphic designer. Starting from advertisement, she slowly entered a wider visually artistic environment, which included films, music, and theatre.

A Multi-faceted and Timeless Designer

Born in 1938 in Tokyo to a commercial graphic designer father, Eiko Ishioka followed his steps, defying all odds since said field was (and somewhat still is) a male-dominated space in Japan.

Her career swiftly began after graduating from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, as she joined Shiseido’s advertising division. The Sixties were a raging cultural time for Tokyo, where, after WWII, the Western influence was extremely notorious, from the attire to the lifestyle. Ishioka was no exception. Through Shiseido, she challenged the stereotypical traditional view of Japanese women as submissive and doll-esque. While doing so, she built the basis of what would later define her style, such as depicting bold and strong women.

After Shiseido, she became Chief Art Director for PARCO, a high-end Japanese department store. Her PARCO campaigns are renowned for having nothing to do with the products but being bizarre enough to catch the public’s eye. These unusual ads were shocking and brave, with some even being low-key erotic, inviting women to empower themselves. In fact, Ishioka’s ads presented aggressive and straightforward taglines: “Girls be ambitious,” “Don’t stare at the nude—Be naked,” or “Can West wear East?” Let alone that she cast models from countries all around the world like Morocco, India, Kenya, and more.

Eiko Ishioka could be described as someone ahead of her time, always pushing boundaries and limits of the public, especially the Japanese. She provoked Japan’s logical and conservative mindset while shaping a realistic image of the world and its citizens: chaotic, varied, and free.

Eiko Ishioka Parco Ad can west wear east — 1979 PARCO ad Can West Wear East with Faye Dunaway│© Kazumi Kurigami

In fact, she’s remembered for her intercultural approach: an attack against the cultural and aesthetic separation between countries, which became a timeless symbol of change in Japanese art. Unsurprisingly, she always stood against definitions. In an interview with Ingrid Sischy for Artforum Magazine in 1984, she stated, “It’s not so different between Japan and your country. People talk about what is original and what is Oriental. My answer is that if this is a table with five artists from different countries—one from Britain, one from Germany, one from China, one Japanese, one Swiss—and someone puts a white cube on the table, we will all recognise it because by now it’s like the egg, a very common, international motif. Eggs are consumed by poor people, rich people, middle-class people [...] I want to use international subjects [...] international, talented people as my paints, many different media for my cameras.”

But beyond the ad campaigns, her later artistic experiments studied “the self." Her rebellious vision clothed an anthropological exploration of people in fantastic realms and reality.

Ishioka’s Most Notorious Works

During her time at PARCO, Ishioka opened her own agency, but things changed tremendously when she moved to the US in the Eighties. Expanding her career towards photography, cinema, and music, the designer’s creativity got the deserved recognition. Among her most notorious collaborators were photographer Reni Riefenstahl, musician Björk, and prestigious film directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader.

With cinema, something snapped. To this day, her collaborations represent a symbol and a continuous influence. Her first work was designing the Japanese poster for Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Moreover, Ishioka’s following projects granted many awards, such as the 1985 Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (dir. by Paul Schrader). Later on, she received an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (dir. by Francis Ford Coppola) in 1993.

eiko ishioka mishima golden pavilion set — Eiko Ishioka working on the Golden Pavilion set for *Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters*

But Ishioka's iconic and long-lasting collaboration with Indian director Tarsem Singh (aka Tarsem) probably stands out the most. As a matter of fact, her most renowned work might be her costume design vision for The Fall (2006). However, the styling on The Cell (2000; especially for J.Lo) and Mirror Mirror (2012) are also exemplary. The latter was her last project, as she sadly passed away a few months before the film's release.

The most captivating element of her design is certainly the use of colors. They are exuberant, striking, almost grotesque, but always perfectly elaborated. Although chaotic and bold, they do not overshadow details. Moreover, her creativity distinguishes itself thanks to a voluptuous silhouette and a bewildering usage of surprising elements.

Known for her multicultural depiction of identity, her artistic vision successfully blends the West and the East. For example, a mix of pure white with an extensive use of intense red that echoes Japanese aesthetics. In addition, Ishioka often juxtaposed different fabrics (padding, stitching, etc.), which brought volume. As many critics put it, she created “real-life origami," perfect to shape a surrealist visual. Unsurprisingly, this worked perfectly with Tarsem. She brought to life a dreamlike, fairytale setting, beyond the logical world she desired to put aside. Not only that, but international and wide imaginativeness—a “borderless” one, if we might.

However, Ishioka’s vision was not limited to cinema. In 1987, she received a Grammy for the art direction of Miles Davis’ Tutu album, photographed by Irving Penn. She also directed Björk’s Cocoon music video and designed the costumes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Ishioka’s costume designs were destined for the stage. She worked for the Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, which granted a colourful and energetic performance. In 2012, she received a Tony nomination for her work on the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Later in her career, as many described, she became a creative force in theatre productions, such as The Ring of Nibelung (1998–1999) and The Dutch National Opera.

eiko ishioka summer olympics 2008 costume design — Eiko Ishioka costume design for summer olympics 2008│via Wikimedia Commons│© Tim Hipps

An Underrated Visionary

In her book Watashi Design (2005) appears an interesting preface:

“The most important thing to survive in such an era may be cultivating the power of your true self, the power that arises from inside of you. We have as much information as dust flying in the air, and depending on how you use it, it may certainly be a weapon for surfing this chaotic world, but in the end, you won’t reach people’s hearts by presenting ideas and expressions to the world based on patchwork-like collections of information.”

It’s complicated to explain why Ishioka’s popularity never was as it should have been. Of course, one may (as the artist herself did) relate it to the unrecognition of costume and graphic design, which are considered behind-the-scenes roles—they remain, in fact, in the shadows. However, there are no secrets behind her talent and success. Her exceptional vision stands out for many, and through her designs and artistic creations, one can easily detect her timeless capacity and aesthetic poetry.

In June 2011, for an interview with Tokion, Ishioka explained her creative vision and work attitude throughout the years: “For me, it’s important to ‘never follow what’s in fashion.’ I don’t want to imitate others. I managed to survive by expressing what I want to do. [...] If you can’t create something original, you can’t survive.” She continued: “I’m always standing on the tip of my toes, at the edge of a cliff. I feel like that often. If you’re careless, you’ll fall and die, but that’s when you take a stand and survive; I had many moments like this. That’s the essence of creativity.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Letterboxd (@letterboxd)

This daring nature luckily worked in her favour: she challenged the status quo and societal constraints and defied race and gender in modern post-war Japan. Surely so, Eiko Ishioka proved herself a phenomenal art director and designer, thanks to her impressive relationship with transcending cultural and historical barriers as a Japanese female artist.

Although her name remains unknown to many, her groundbreaking career stunned millions and broadened the perceptions of those who saw the results of her fruits.

Featured