Mame Kurogouchi (Q3269)
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Mame Kurogouchi is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Mame Kurogouchi |
Mame Kurogouchi is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Japanese culture serves as constant inspiration for Maiko Kurogouchi. With each new season, she draws from this rich heritage, showcasing her references through meticulously curated moodboards and displays of beautiful artefacts or books. Her work reflects a deep connection to traditional Japanese aesthetics, which she weaves into her modern designs.Although she is typically drawn to revitalizing traditional crafts with an emphasis on textures, surfaces, and materials, this season she shifted her focus toKatachi—the form and shape of objects. This marked a subtle departure from her usual approach, leaning more into conceptual exploration, while still honoring the craftsmanship at the heart of her work.While designing her spring collection, working with pottery led her to contemplate the nature of form—how it is both tangible and elusive. She became captivated by the simplicity of found or familiar objects, such as stones discovered on a walk through the hills, ceramic buttons crafted by artist Lucie Rie, seashells, and ceremonial lanterns. She began capturing them in close-up photographs, then sketched them by blacking out the details, leaving only the abstract contours of their forms. These simplified silhouettes became the foundation for the slender, serene designs in her collection, showcased at Ogata, a Japanese haute-cuisine restaurant.Kurogouchi played on lithe shapes, crafting garments that were delicately pleated, asymmetrically draped, or softly shaped into cocoon-like forms and off-the-shoulder flowing tunics. They were presented in a neat palette of black and white, accented by occasional flashes of luminous green. A standout piece was a form-fitting bodice in jade green, finely pleated in jacquard, featuring light voluminous sleeves and adorned with delicate sakura blossoms, inspired by the traditional lanterns of Kyoto.Despite its technical intricacy and layers of complex references to Japanese imagery and craftsmanship, the collection radiated a sense of poise, reflecting Kurogouchi's highly sophisticated and artistic approach to design.
24 September 2024
Maiko Kurogouchi’s collections are a sort of crash course on ancient, sadly disappearing Japanese crafting traditions, that she patiently researches and tries to regenerate, artfully downloading century old textures, patterns and figurative motifs onto her serene creations. Passionate about ceramics, this season she traveled south of Japan to the mountainous Saga Prefecture, the cradle ofkaratsu, a kind of pottery said to have flourished at the end of the 16th century. What Kurogouchi wanted to do, she said, was to transform garments into “wearable ceramics.”Spending months with the potters, Kurogouchi got acquainted with differentkaratsuvariations; in mountain villages she found rare earthenware fragments, from which she drew the collection’s color scheme and the overall decorative inspiration. The predominantly gray tones recalled the raw soil used to create the simple pottery shapes typical of the region, while the fire of the kilns where ceramics are burned was an impactful chromatic reference that raised the collection’s otherwise temperate vibration of dark tones and lean, serene silhouettes.Terracotta and warm orange hues graced a long one-shoulder fluid dress worn under a matching oversized shirt, printed in Kyoto by artisans applying mochi rice to the fabric, letting it dry and then pouring the dye over the cracks, achieving an imperfect, haphazard pattern similar to a fireworks display or volcanic eruptions. The auroral tones of an alpaca cocoon coat were reprised from the delicate glazed surfaces unique to themadara karatsutechnique, while the graphic micro-floral stamps on Jacquard draped dresses and on fitted knitted pieces were drawn from the delicately ornamentalmishima karatsuceramics.Held (as last season) at the Paris outpost of Ogata, the sanctuary of Japanese haute cuisine, the collection exuded the enigmatic grace of a Japanese haiku; the amazing textural work was handled with subtlety, making it visually intense while keeping the pieces eminently wearable. The atmospheric soundtrack by Japanese artist Yuko Mohri hinted at a mille-feuille of sound textures, where a piano was programmed to trace the ambient sound of the kiln fires burning. It felt magical—as if an ethereal golden dust of cracking notes were enveloping the space.
27 February 2024
Maiko Kurogouchi skipped the traditional catwalk this season, instead treating her guests to a rare moment of quiet and delight among the nonstop whirlwind of fashion shows. She staged her collection at the Paris outpost of Tokyo’s Ogata, a temple of Japanese haute cuisine of exquisite design and such a preternaturally calm atmosphere that it felt suspended in time.Ogata was conceived as a multidimensional experiential place—besides the restaurant, it houses a tearoom, a boutique, and an exhibition space, which is where Kurogouchi displayed the crafts, antiques, and cahiers that served as the collection’s inspiration. Called Fragments, it referenced the centuries-old art of Japanese porcelain making, particularly one of its highest expressions, Early Imari pottery, made since the 17th century in the town of Arita in the Saga Prefecture. Kurogouchi traveled to the site, immersing herself in the past and present of the revered tradition, which is being actualized by contemporary artists, who guided the designer through her exploration of Early Imari techniques and artworks.The pale tones of Early Imari were translated into the collection’s nuanced palette of translucent layers of neutrals, recalling the “ideal white” transparency potters were pursuing in the past as a template of perfection. The glow of the porcelain’s glaze was hinted at through the use of sheer lamé jersey, rendered into column dresses with delicate plays of knots and draping. Deep diving into the elaborate culture of pottery making, Kurogouchi also attempted to masteryokoku, an ancient technique of pressing molds onto porcelain surfaces to obtain patterns. “I wanted to transform porcelain into clothes,” she said with the conviction that only a true passion can drive. Through the yokoku technique, abstract curlicued motifs were embossed like reverse tattoos onto denim straight-cut jackets, trousers, and jumpsuits, as well as regal, sleek silk coats, while asymmetrical knitted tunics were woven with delicate handiwork, reminiscent of shards of porcelain.The collection had a serene, almost ceremonial tone. Volumes were billowy and gentle; linear yet soft-handed design jibed with today’s flair for the pared down. Just a few stronger accents of black leather offset the overall vibe of poised serenity, which felt authentic, personal, and refreshing.
In her intense determination to energize old Japanese traditions and keep them alive and pertinent for today, Kurogouchi’s work, albeit subtle, is rather remarkable.
26 September 2023
Embracing and preserving the centuries-old Japanese craft of basket weaving is what designer Mame Kurogouchi is after; for fall, she went deeper into her exploration of a culture that brings to life objects that are visually and technically superb, and also layered with a profound sense of spirituality.Bamboo is believed to have healing properties, and it is a symbol of flexibility, strength, and growth. “The bamboo-basket artists had a relationship of reverence and respect with the plant, so much so that some of them refused to eattakenoko, the bamboo shoots used in Japanese cuisine,” explained Mame Kurogouchi backstage before today’s show, which was again inspired by the work of Likuza Rokansai, the most famous master of the basket-weaving craft. Active until the late ’50s, he was a proponent of a return to the natural beauty of bamboo’s texture instead of just pursuing intricate techniques. The collection’s clarity of shapes and volumes reflected the purity of his sentiment. “I find his approach extremely modern,” said Koruguchi.While keeping the silhouettes slender, minimal, and almost severe, the designer interspersed the collection with exceptional pieces, which highlighted her passion for unique crafting techniques. Elaborate dyeing and weaving procedures interacted, creating remarkable textures and visuals. A square-cut jumper in brushed alpaca was dyed using the “origami dyeing” method, resulting in irregular yet harmonious patches of earthy tones; the same effect was reproduced on a slim coat in raw wool, whose fluffy texture was obtained through a complex yarn-spinning method, made by a special knitting machine that only one company in Japan is able to use.Throughout the collection, Kurogouchi rhythmically alternated simplicity and rich decorative flair. An almost hypnotic marble motif was printed on a pair of silk flared trousers and on a soft-cut blouse; 3D ribbons in variously sized net patterns mimicked the intricacies of the interlacing stripes of bamboo baskets, and they were applied at the hem or at the front of elongated knitted tunics. “These nets were made by a factory that produces wrapping nets for hams,” Kurogouchi explained. “It was actually quite amusing to see that while one machine was producing the ham nets, another was weaving the sophisticated streamers I commissioned for the collection.” Meticulous, ingenious Japanese craftsmanship can turn even a humble ham net into an exceptional piece of high fashion.
28 February 2023
Mame Kurogouchi’s spring pieces would be a feast for the eyes of even the most fastidious connoisseur of the Japanese culture of bamboo basket weaving, an extraordinary, centuries-old art producing artifacts of exquisite beauty that she has been collecting for years. This season’s collection was her artistic homage to a treasured national tradition.Kurogouchi is a champion of Japanese craft; it’s an attitude she inherited from the late Issey Miyake, who was her mentor. In the case of basket weaving,craftdoesn’t even come close to describing the mastery that goes into the making of such meticulous handwoven treasures. As often happens in Japanese culture, there’s a further layer of soulful meaning, which makes these objects even more precious. “Bamboo is strong but also flexible,” Kurogouchi explained backstage. “And inside it’s hollow—a place of repose, which can be filled with your own sense of self. It expresses the equilibrium between strength and tranquility.”Through her extensive research on the history of bamboo basket weaving, Kurogouchi was drawn to the oeuvre of Iizuka Rōkansai, an early-20th-century artist who transformed the mingu, an everyday item of common use, into an object of extreme sophistication. She worked on her own version of Rōkansai’s signature bundle-plait technique, turning it into beautiful pieces—an hourglass-shaped corset, a miniskirt worn over a simple underpinning, a stunning formfitting long dress. That they were handwoven from cotton shoelaces made them even more exceptional.The bamboo theme was explored throughout the collection in many poetic renditions. The fresh mint green shade of bamboo forests inspired the dye of a sheer silk ensemble—a round-shaped elongated top was worn over a slim matching skirt and embroidered with a delicate motif of intertwined bamboo leaves designed by Kurogouchi herself. On the same note, round bamboo beads were woven into a macramé tabard, as well as into a skirt and vest. As a further nod to Japanese artisanal mastery, the sakiori rag-weave technique was turned into a round-shaped jacket and a sculptural top, a sort of soft armor dyed in dark shades of blackened brown reminiscent of the smoked wood lining old Japanese interiors.If Kurogouchi wanted to prove that fashion can still inspire wonder with finesse and imagination, she certainly hit the mark.
27 September 2022
“Last season I got the inspiration from my hometown, so for this collection I wanted to go very far away,” Mame Kurogouchi explained with a slight giggle over Zoom on a recent morning. The designer and her boyfriend, a photographer, took a trip to Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and while out walking during the very cold winter, she noticed a red-crowned crane. “Her movement was so delicate, and looked like a graceful Japanese woman,” Kurogouchi said. It also reminded her of a folktale that her grandmother and parents told her when she was young. When she returned home she found an old book with illustrations of the folktale, and those colors informed her palette of black, white, navy, tan, and bright red.The majestic birds could be found everywhere in this collection, including on the abstracted all-over print used for wearable cotton blouses and sun dresses. Flocks of them decorated tanks, cardigans, and gowns alike. Most winning was the finale dress, made of a white silk jacquard woven with monochromatic tiny birds illustrated by Kurogouchi, her signature voluminous sleeves dyed bright vermilion red and anchored in sinuous cuffs, a black ribbon unfussily tied around the neck. The sleeves were dyed using a traditional technique calledArimatsu-shibori, which is usually reserved for creating small repeating patterns, but in this case was used to create one singular print that mimicked the crane’s plumage. (It was also used to bold effect on a slip dress made of the same crane silk jacquard, this time in navy, with theArimatsu-shiboridetail done in shades of black and blue at the top of the bodice.)A houndstooth pattern also figured prominently in the collection and its inclusion reveals the depths of Kurogouchi’s inexhaustible creativity when mining a source of inspiration; in Japanese, a houndstooth is calledchidorigoshi. “The Japanese see [the pattern] as flying birds,” Kurogouchi explained via a translator, “it literally means ‘thousand birds lattice pattern.” The houndstooth pieces—tailored maxi skirts and boxy jackets in black and white; and a particularly alluring dress with a very 1920’s silhouette of a blouson bodice and empire waist—gave the offering a subtly cool edge. “When I make a garment, I am thinking about the pattern, and the most important thing for me is using the curved line,” she explained, showing how the collar on her own dress subtly wrapped around her shoulders.
In her quest to explore Western styles to merge with traditional Japanese details, she looked to actresses from the era for inspiration.Further grounding the collection were a few pieces made from white cotton tweed decorated with synthetic black leather details, their edges left raw to showcase their handmade quality. “I was inspired by a bamboo basket,” Kurogouchi explained. “I tried to mix the [idea] of the craft with the woven technique as well.” Her modus-operandi, of seeking and supporting traditional crafts from around Japan and incorporating them into her modern vision of womanhood, is something she surely inherited from the designer Issey Miyake, who was her mentor, and who passed away a few days before our appointment.“I learned a lot of things from him, the most important is the attitude towards making a garment. He really respected the past and the future as well, and I have to do the same things for my younger generation.” She continued, “To pass my skills to the younger generation, and to protect Japanese craftsmanship. So I think — I believe — that it’s what I should do right now.” Of course, she already is.
11 August 2022
It’s not often you hear of a designer rubbing her cheek against moss as a way to inform textures in a new collection. Maiko Kurogouchi did just that for her fall 2022 collection, titled Land. While, yes, each season she traverses Japan and the past for references, instead of appropriating them in the way other designers bop from reference to reference, time period to time period, she seems to summon the past and the natural world closer to her with each new collection. This season, she hiked into the mountains of Nagano, her home region, hugged trees, cheeked moss, and found beauty in the densely layered textures and autumnal colors of the Japanese peaks.When she brought this back to her design team, they worked on three major through-lines. Firstly, the landscape. Taking muddy autumnal colors like rust, stone, evergreen, and charcoal, Kurogouchi created textural fabrics that flutter between the colors. Tiny moss embroideries grow from the collars of some dresses; wool pieces are brushed to evoke the exact feeling of that moss on the designer’s cheek. The intimacy of Kurogouchi’s practice has made her both famous and respected in her region, and this season a textile artist in Nagano lent her handicraft to a series of knits that chronicle the four seasons on the mountaintop. Little daisies are embroidered on the hem of the Summer sweater; “So cute,” smiles the designer.Then came Kurogouchi’s reverence for her ancestors and the history of her beloved country. She cast her eye all the way back to 14,000 B.C.E., Japan’s Jomon period, when humans adorned pottery with swirling patterns made by pressing ropes and cords on the clay. She found a similarity in her own rope work introduced in fall 2020, when she enlisted a shoelace factory to make embroidered lace out of shoelaces to a hefty, magical effect. She brought the practice back this season, splicing the shoelace-lace with double sided jersey dresses, black on the outside and bright leaf green on the inside. One piece, in sienna, is entirely made of the shoelaces warped and woven into a tapestry that links the past and the present. When asked how she created such a garment she laughs and implies that she made her factory a little “crazy” with her masterful plans for their humble shoelaces.Finally, she developed a swirling jacquard traditional to Japan that evokes both the landscape and the Jomon pottery, a soft but structured fabric cut into jackets and suiting. Well, not exactlyfinally.
Kurogouchi is never finished resurrecting the spirits of Japanese culture. Two seasons ago, she embarked on a new journey with a traditional pleating studio; now she has convinced them to make a black dress from hundreds of bisecting, curvilinear pleats. The dress flutters down her runway in the lookbook; imagine how it would look in Nagano’s mountain breeze. “As I was designing, I closed my eyes and thought of the mountain, my feelings of being on the mountain,” she says. Poetry has mostly died down in fashion, but Kurogouchi is keeping the soul, the emotions, and the humanity of making clothing alive. How lucky are the people who will buy and wear her clothes that come with millennia of history attached to them, ghosts reanimated by her gentle hand.
1 March 2022
Many designers have approached the spring 2022 season as anafter. How will we dressafterall this? From her vantage point in Japan, Mame Kurogouchi sees spring 2022 as athroughmoment; how should we dress through all these changes? Her spring 2022 collection marks her 10th anniversary in business, and she approached designing for a modern woman with her signature gentleness. The shadowy, elegant pieces here are not declarations of re-emergence or flashy comeback pieces; they reflect the ghosts and trials of lives lived.Kurogouchi has created a wistful, emotional palette inspired by Japan’s smoky mountains and flowers around Nagano—her hometown where she staged a 10th-anniversary exhibition—using some of Japan’s oldest techniques. A dyeing house in Kyoto helped create subtle gradations in fabric using a proprietary, centuries-old method. (The artisans wouldn’t even tell Kurogouchi how it’s done.) Another group of craftspeople used itajime shibori to create even lighter ombrés between petal and lilac colors. As we speak about the collection, she pulls up all her reference images that she takes with an old 35mm film camera and discusses her memories of growing up in Nagano, sleeping in her grandmother’s house under a mosquito net overlooking the mountaintops. She asked a traditional net-maker in Nara to create a custom airy linen for her; the artisans, she said, were thrilled to have a new commission.It’s rare to find a designer who can commune so easily with history and her own past without making clothing that looks nostalgic. Using a curved line, Kurogouchi cuts out twists, drapes, and biases that reflect the way a contemporary woman lives: on the move. Her midi dresses, swaying lightly in the breeze, and cropped, curve-hem tops are simply beautiful. On a global level, Kurogouchi remains unsung; here’s hoping that her next 10 years in business bring her flowers.
29 September 2021
The way Maiko Kurogouchi references the small pleasures of life, from the wilt of a flower to the flutter of the breeze, is so magical, one could easily be convinced she lives in another more elegant world. The beauty of her work, though, is that she roots it in reality. For fall 2021, Kurogouchi reflected on the way golden hour light creeps through the blinds in her bedroom, casting auburn bars that waltz across the wall and ceiling until they disappear in moonlight.Kurogouchi translated her theme somewhat literally with two traditional Japanese techniques. The first isitajimeshiboridyeing, where the fabric is pleated and each pleat is pressed between boards, so that just the ridges of the pleat meet the dye. It’s used on her wafting midi-skirts and on a knotted blouse, flickers of honey orange and black dye framing the silhouettes. She also worked with the sole clay marbling factory in Japan, based in Kyoto, to create swirling marble prints that shift from black-and-white to a furious vermilion. “No straight lines,” she said over a Zoom call. She developed a curved pleating technique seen on a gray tunic and an irregular ribbed knit set in which each rib swells and thins down the body.The romance of Kurogouchi’s world pushes up against her natural pragmatism. Her silhouettes have always been forgiving, and with the splash of new patterns the collection bridges the gap between pajama dressing and smart re-emergence style. It might be best, though, for daydreaming—a luxury if you can afford it, especially now.
2 March 2021
A Mame Kurogouchi appointment is a sensory overload in the best way possible. As a designer, Kurogouchi is diligent with her references and inspiration, ordering and chronicling them into albums on her phone and sketches in her notebook. She collects ephemera from life—a flower petal, a snapshot of the street, a page from a vintage book—and thoughtfully transposes these ideas into her clothing. Even though Japan didn’t engage in a formalized COVID-19 lockdown, Kurogouchi nonetheless decided to close her studio for a while and cancel her trips to factories, places across the country specializing in heritage traditions that she helps keep in business. How could she find the same levels of inspiration, collect the same magic, from home?Meditating on the windows in her residence, portals to both the physical world and the world of memory, Kurogouchi found it was easier to be inspired than she expected. On a video call she spoke at length about references to her grandmother’s curtains and the way those ivory translucent shades flickered in her own mind. “It’s not always a clear vision,” she said through a translator. “Like walking in a fog. It’s like pushing very thin layers of fabrics or curtains layer by layer, trying to discover what is there beyond that.” In her notebook, Kurogouchi sketched all the windows in her mind, curtains blowing beside them in a breeze, and on the opposite pages she dry-pressed flowers collected from her walks.The curtains and the flowers merged in her patterns, with blooms like irises and lilies stitched into ultra-sheer materials. Kurogouchi’s signature dress, the last look of the collection, was produced in a kimono factory using traditional fabrics to a more contemporary end. She also created a custom silk-nylon blend for a yellow dress dotted with tiny flowers.The collection’s film was shot in her native Nagano, one of Japan’s most historic areas and one of the first sites of civilization in the country. Kurogouchi is celebrating a decade in business this season; the anniversary prompted her to explore more about herself, her past, and her working process. The results are patently lovely. Here’s hoping that in the 10 years to come more of the world turns on to the wonder of Kurogouchi’s craft—you will want these memories in the making.
28 September 2020
For the second consecutive season, Mame Kurogouchi found her inspiration in the Japanese tomeTsutsumu: Traditional Japanese Packaging. Whereas for spring, she looked to the light, layered wrappings of candy or flowers, for fall the book’s traditional basket-weaving techniques caught her eye. She flipped through images of these baskets on her phone before the show, some oblong, others plump, each uniquely constructed for the object they carried. And isn’t that how a woman’s clothing should be? Worked out on every end to carry her smartly throughout her life?This collection was a stride forward for the Japanese designer. It proved that for all her research and intense technique, she can also make the kinds of clothes women long to wear. Her palette of earthen neutrals, inspired by a recent trip to Iceland, grounded her innovative designs in the real world. Kurogouchi favors a long, lean silhouette, but by pairing forgiving tunic tops with slightly flared trousers, she made the look more accessible to a wider range of bodies. Additionally, the caning-inspired cuffs on her blouses were detachable, allowing the wearer a more streamlined blouse should she so desire.Kurogouchi also introduced flippy miniskirts and dresses that evoked the free-spirited nature of Gaby Aghion’s Chloé—see one especially cute clay number with woven flutter sleeves—and sparkling anoraks covered in basket-inspired wrappers. In the hands of lesser designers, these caning outer layers might’ve seemed like frivolous little styling tricks, but here a hay-colored apron or a black gilet felt exactly as necessary as Kurogouchi’s new lug-sole boot. These pieces were also ingeniously constructed; rather than use a traditional weaver, Kurogouchi asked a shoelace-maker to construct all her delicate shells. Her dedication to basketry as a theme also freed her from prints, allowing the textiles and silhouettes she created to really shine. The biggest shame here is that more people were not in the audience to see it.
24 February 2020
Due to scheduling conflicts, family obligations, late flights, and some lost luggage, no Vogue Runway reviewer attended Mame Kurogouchi’s Spring 2020 show. The feeling of awfulness that stemmed from missing the designer’s presentation quickly bloomed into delight upon entering her showroom in Paris. There, she and her team had erected a monument to her craftsmanship and thoughtfulness where, after being offered an espresso and taught a lesson on Japanese jelly candies that relate to specific seasons, she unpackaged a vintage Japanese tome,Tsutsumu: Traditional Japanese Packaging, and walked us through the ins and outs of traditional wrapping that informed this collection. It took almost an hour to learn about the specific traditions, an hour that makes the brevity of her runway show seem almost absurd. For a designer who cares so much about supporting the artistry of her country, her hometown, and her people, how could a 15-minutedéfiléever do?After inspecting Kurogouchi’s garments up close, I’m assured she is one of the most thoughtful designers on the Paris schedule. First, she is an anthropological artisan above all else, employing factories throughout Japan to use arcane techniques to new ends, like her semi-sheer knits that seem to be two-ply but are actually the product of an ancient tradition from her hometown, Nagano. Second, she can riff on a theme to diverse ends: Spring 2020 was mostly about packaging, silkworms and their cocoons, and flowers, the way things wrapped up or discarded can be beautiful in a moment. That path led her to explore knitwear, ikats, embroideries, suiting, lingerie, and printed frocks, leaving no hemline, seam, graphic, or stitch unconsidered. For some designers, that level of attention to detail—the willingness to spend more than half the week visiting factories—would be a distraction. For Kurogouchi it’s an inspiration. Her clothing, so poignantly thought-out and impressively made, wears easily on the body, including a silk floral dress with bell sleeves or a netlike knit piece that was inspired by a piece of garbage the designer saw on the side of the road. Her ability to translate the cerebral into the covetable is truly impressive. No wonder big-name actresses have been squeezing in appointments to Kurogouchi’s studio between press and buyers.
25 September 2019
The startling beauty of Maiko Kurogouchi’s latest collection came to flower at the 18th-century hôtel particulier on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré where Gabrielle Chanel once lived. The Japanese designer held three exquisite runway shows, each an hour apart, with the restorative air of an afternoon goûter. There’s a transcendental romanticism and spiritualism to her work, which feels uniquely Japanese in its ties both to nature and centuries-old craft traditions.A few months ago, Kurogouchi had been exploring a cave in Japan’s Saga Prefecture, where she unearthed several broken shards of painted blue and white porcelain from the Edo period. They reminded her of the diary project she had begun last season, in her attempt to “find beautiful small things in my daily life,” she said. “Those fragments made me think of my own fragments of memories.” In tracking those moments, Kurogouchi also drew a connection between the ceramics and other blues flitting in and out of view: the pile of navy and turquoise Edo-era silks that she had just bought at an antiques shop in Nara; the color of her favorite bath salts, which she had begun photographing as they dissolved abstractly in water; the catalog ofSeizureby British artist Roger Hiorns on her shelf.Thus Kurogouchi began with those blues—a rich navy coat that looked like leather from afar but up close was revealed to be a shiny jacquard, alongside silk turtleneck blouses with full, floating sleeves. The designer is so elegant in her references to her native Japan. It’s the simple suggestion of a lace collar layered beneath a kimono-like wrap, the subtle asymmetry in the vertical line of an ornate jacquard robe woven with gold thread, itself a reference tokinranbelts. See the royal blue Victoriana knit dress with such thickly layered sleeves they could be peeled back like rose petals. “Those sleeves were actually inspired by dumplings!” Kurogouchi said, laughing. She gestured to a version in delicate off-white, whose rippling lines did recall the curved ridges of a gyoza.As with last season, the standout dresses featured a rich tapestry of textures and colors and patterns, many of which were made by longtime kimono craftsmen. Think: a plunging checked silk gown with hand- embroidered bell sleeves, white quilted silk cuffs, and a lace lining that floated down the runway. All the lovely little watercolor blooms had been hand-painted by Kurogouchi herself, a reference to those bits of broken porcelain.
This was the designer’s third time in Paris, and the industry has begun to catch on to her talent—though not quickly enough. There’s something quite special at work here; those not keeping track will miss it.
1 March 2019
Talk in Tokyo’s fashion scene has lately centered around the need to find and support a new generation of talent—the search for the next Sacai has come up as a subject more than once this season. Designer Maiko Kurogouchi made a compelling case for herself with the second Paris presentation of her eight-year-old label Mame Kurogouchi. (Mame, the Japanese word forbean, is her childhood nickname).Kurogouchi draws from the technical skills she honed at Issey Miyake and her passion to preserve Japan’s long history of handcraft. She leaned deeper into the latter this season, experimenting with a new creative method: Every day for three months, Kurogouchi took one photograph, sketched one look, and jotted one note in a black leather journal. Flipping through the dog-earred pages, Kurogouchi explained, the entries are somewhat quotidian: A Polaroid of the white toast and brown egg she had for breakfast, next to a sketch of a roadside flower that struck her fancy, its petals pressed into the paper, as well. “But later, it helped me to go back and see the patterns of my thoughts,” she explained.In particular, Kurogouchi found inspiration in two spots: thematsuri, or summer festivals, she had visited in the countryside, where dancers wore handmade patchwork kimonos cut from faded family heirlooms, and the work of Shoen Uemura, a female painter from the early 1900s who was the first to capture the regular working woman in her everyday life—in long kimonos, shrouded in the pale lilac wisteria that blooms in spring. Thus, the floor-grazing pastel robes here, beautifully assembled from patchwork-printed silks at a former kimono factory in Kyoto. The opening look, a wisteria-colored gown with round ’40s-style buttons down the front, softened the reference to a starched silk banner run along one side and a detachable organza collar.There were a few fluttery minidresses, as well, with tiny petals hand-stitched in Gifu, a region known for its delicate sashiko embroidery. They looked lovely and surprisingly wearable, given the near-couture-level craft invested in each garment. Also interesting: the clear PVC day bags, made to resemble the cut kiriko glass, often seen filled with tawny whisky. Much like Uemura, Kurogouchi has managed the neat trick of taking the everyday and making it look exquisite.
17 October 2018
Given that Maiko Kurogouchi had already shown a collection weeks earlier in Paris, one might expect her Tokyo Fashion Week show to be less than eventful, but the designer arrived ready to rock. Making her debut in the city and christening Amazon Fashion’s brand-new space in the process, Kurogouchi delivered a succinct overview of Japanese design with a Parisian verve. Kurogouchi put the focus squarely on Japanese creativity by referencing one of the first Western female designers to explore the region in depth. Invited to Japan in the 1940s by the Ministry of International Trade, Charlotte Perriand’s influential furniture helped to change the look of interiors by utilizing textiles, color combinations, and techniques culled from Japan’s rich history of arts and crafts.That idea was carried over into Kurogouchi’s ready-to-wear, with floral’s echoing the patterns of kimono fabrics, made from local textiles. “All our fabrics are made in Japan, so I’m always exploring the countryside in search of new ones,” said Kurogouchi, who regularly collaborates with up to 100 different manufacturers over the course of a year. More than capturing an aesthetic, the process also serves as a means of preservation, utilizing the skills of local artisans and techniques that may have developed over centuries to create something modern and intricate. There are layers to Kurogouchi’s work; on the surface, a vivid embroidered dress with lengthy sleeves is an appealing take on transparency, but the details—knots, lace, knitting, and more—add an ethereal quality to a look that could have been straightforward.The collection’s strongest moments occurred when the mishmash of details allowed for a reinterpretation of the classics. The motorcycle jacket got a makeover with mesh overlay, woven leather, and colorful patches; while blue and white chunky winter sweaters looked off-kilter thanks to an abundance of tassels. Rendering a corset top in layers of shredded leather created a dramatic 3-D effect, and black evening dresses came alive beneath a cloud of crimson fringe.
23 October 2018