[wahnfrieden]

It's not translated from Japanese, it's originally in English. "A-POC" for "A Piece of Cloth". It refers to garments sewn from a single cut of a ream of cloth. It was translated into Japanese as 一枚の布 which isn't any more meaningful, but the original trademark is in English.

edit: What are you disagreeing with? That's what I'm referring to. The Issey Miyake trademark, which the label uses as "A-POC" as an English acronym, and translates into Japanese only to explain it to the domestic market rather than as the trademark itself. I linked that MoMa article elsewhere in this thread

[0x457]

Well, no? This is A-POC it was inspired by: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361 and I'm pretty sure this is where that meaning you are referring to originated from.

[wahnfrieden]

Yes...

[0x457]

What I mean is: even though its true name is originally in English, Issey Miyake probably thought of it in Japanese, and it made more sense to him.

[wahnfrieden]

Sure but the way his company translates "a piece of cloth" into Japanese has the same literal meaning. There's nothing more meaningful, it has the same exact meaning. My opinion is that it's chosen to be deliberately simplistic - what could be simpler or less expressive than a piece of fabric with fashion - because it highlights how much innovation in craft and resulting form results from the simple description taken as actually an extreme constraint: nothing but a single piece of cloth. And then when you perhaps think about it more, or see some of the work, you realize the complex ingenuity of it, in stark contrast to the simplicity of the phrase itself. That contrast enhances the impact by highlighting the gap between the humble description and the complexity of the result which nonetheless remains faithful to that simplicity.

A more illustrative term might be more easily understandable, at the cost of elegance (in simplicity and constraint) and surprise (from your underestimation of the work based on its name). The term is branding.

BTW another reference is Maurizio Amadei's "One Piece" work. Here's an installation/artwork he did that makes it easy to understand: https://lucentement.com/blogs/journal/m-a-by-maurizio-amadei... He also has many products labeled "One Piece [X]" such as "One Piece Wallet" or "One Piece Boot", where they are made from a single piece of leather (never cut into multiple pieces) and with a minimal number of seams. He chooses a similarly simple term, "One Piece", with enigmatic effect.

[astrange]

The sentence structure 'inspired by the concept of "thing in quotation marks"' is what's translated.

[wahnfrieden]

> 「一枚の布」のコンセプトからインスピレーション

... isn't any more meaningful than the English, it is exactly "inspired by the concept of "thing in quotation marks"

I think this article was originally written in English anyway (only the English one credits an author, who is not Japanese)

[astrange]

That use of quote marks is Japanese. It's used for emphasis, it gives the thing in quote marks an air of specialness like it's a fancy philosophical concept.