tokujin yoshioka’s issey miyake perfume emits light into the bottle from its oval glass bottom

Issey Miyake’s LE SEL D’ISSEY perfume bottle by tokujin yoshioka

Tokujin Yoshioka designs Issey Miyake’s LE SEL D’ISSEY perfume bottle with an oval-shaped solid glass at the bottom. Here, the light enters and spreads throughout the inside of the container through refraction, illuminating the home of the colored liquid. The projected ray isn’t a single beam but a series of circular droplets, as if mimicking the patterns of a stone thrown into a river, hopping onto the surface for a few seconds before it plummets below.

Even the shape of the bottle shifts because Tokujin Yoshioka envisions an ever-changing form for the project. When the user holds the perfume bottle on one side, the sides create sharp lines, and as they twist it, soft curves slowly dawn. The feel of a bottle with the look of a sculpture is a narrative that punctuates Issey Miyake’s LE SEL D’ISSEY. Somehow, the complementing contrast works well, a rightful homage to many of the late designer’s collections.

all images courtesy of Tokujin Yoshioka

Salt and water as themes of the bottle design

It may not be clear at first, but salt is the theme of Issey Miyake’s LE SEL D’ISSEY perfume bottle. Tokujin Yoshioka vaguely remembers that he and the late Japanese fashion designer talked about the project in the spring of 2022. ‘This project was the first fragrance bottle project that Mr. Miyake offered to me and the last project that he directly talked to me about,’ says the designer, who has worked with Issey Miyake Studio for over 30 years on numerous projects, including the orange aluminum walls for the brand’s flagship store in Paris as well as the ‘O’ watch series.

LE SEL D’ISSEY trails behind the first Issey Miyake fragrance, L’EAU D’ISSEY, thematically. The first embodied the theme of water, thus having a cylindrical bottle that resembles pouring, a waterfall that spreads outward as it drops from above. ‘For the bottle of the new perfume, I aimed to create a design that evokes the pure yet powerful energy of nature, universal yet new, like the future,’ says Tokujin Yoshioka. ‘In designing the bottle for the men’s fragrance LE SEL D’ISSEY, I wanted to express both the purity of water itself and the power of nature.’

a peek of the design below the perfume bottle

Refracting light through the oval-shaped solid glass

Water and salt meet halfway through the design of Tokujin Yoshioka. The latter emerges in the form of transparent solid glass used to create the perfume bottle, as well as the oval shape seemingly embedded into the bottom of the container. It looks like a block of salt or geode, solidified and innate within the structure. When light pushes from the bottom, the series of circular lights that filter through mirrors the grains of salt.

The idea of water comes through the reflection. It is the light that refracts within the bottle, as well as the liquid that doubles as the canvas for the mediated appearance of light. Tokujin Yoshioka says that along with salt and water, he incorporates the phenomenon of light, nature, and human senses into the project. ‘This is a pursuit to create something that is honed from all the senses that humans can feel, including smell, touch, light, and shadow, rather than the material and visual senses of humans,’ he adds.

light enters and spreads throughout the inside of the container through refraction