Tomo Koizumi (Q8009)
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Tomo Koizumi is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Tomo Koizumi |
Tomo Koizumi is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
Tomo Koizumi is constantly working through his feelings about fashion, art, and the boundary between the two. An artist by training, he presented his spring collection as an installation at ESMOD, sponsored by the 2023 Fashion Prize of Tokyo. An accompanying video showed how he approaches fashion as art, mounting many square meters of hand-ruffled polyester organza like a canvas; painting each into abstraction with a mix of oil, acrylic, and spray paint; and draping them into dresses, coats, or skirts on mannequins. Though the designer is always inspired by Rothko, the sometimes moody color combinations here were influenced by the plastic flowers used in the funeral parlor owned by his aunt and where his mother also works.“My art has to be connected to my identity, my background, my memories—the trick is to have my own emotion in it, but I also want it to be not really obvious,” said Koizumi. “I just paint the object.”The Metropolitan Museum of Art and museums at home in Japan and elsewhere around the world have already collected his one-of-a-kind works. The nine-piece lineup shown this week in Paris will be sold through a gallery as art, although its new owners can always wear the pieces if they wish.“It’s a little bit of a different way to dress because it’s just painting,” the designer offered, explaining that—for now, anyway—he still considers himself a fashion designer first and an artist second. “What I do is not fashion fashion because I don’t do ready-to-wear, so I have a good distance from the industry,” he said. Returning to painting as a hobby, and splicing it with fashion, is currently pushing him in new directions, however: On December 9, Koizumi’s first solo art exhibition will open at the Yukikomizutani Gallery in the Tennozu Terrada Art Complex in Tokyo.
27 September 2023
Tomo Koizumi’s international reputation was made in 2019 when Marc Jacobs hosted a presentation for him in New York. Gwendoline Christie, when she was still Brienne of Tarth and not yet a runway star, was a revelation in a showstopper of a multicolor floor length confection by the Japanese designer.Today’s show at Dolce & Gabbana’s headquarters was the Milan sequel to that debut. Koizumi’s irrepressibility is a nice fit with that of his host designers. Such a nice fit that some of the early looks could’ve been mistaken for the fantastical pieces they make for their Alta Moda collections. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana not only loaned their headquarters for a show venue and the atelier space in which to prep for it, they also provided materials for some of the looks. The silk ribbon corsets that topped ombré satin twisted into Koizumi’s signature three-dimensional ruffles definitely seemed made in their honor.“I called the collection Don't Forget to Bring Your Flowers,” Koizumi said pre-show. “When I go to my friend’s homes, I bring flower bouquets as gifts, and this is my bouquet to the people in Milano. With the war and also after Covid I really want to bring joy to people.”Things took a turn for the Tomo about midway through the show with the appearance of a highlighter yellow coat and chartreuse skirt in his polyester organza ruffles, and clothes only got bigger from there. Tess McMillan wore a peachy cape that matched her fiery locks. Debra Shaw’s short-in-front, long-in-back gown was accompanied by a humongous yellow and lavender double-train. The five-person rainbow striped dress was grandest of all—the feel-great moment of Milan Fashion Week.
26 February 2023
Tomo Koizumi has shifted to an annual schedule, choosing to reveal a new batch of his confectionery dresses just once a year. This time around, Koizumi partnered with Rakuten and Tokyo Fashion Week, staging a live show at Tokyo’s Edition Hotel with a small audience. Guests were treated to his latest and greatest red carpet frocks—and yes, these are pieces truly destined for the step-and-repeat.Speaking over Zoom, Koizumi explained that he’s leaning into celebrity associations. Rather than models, he cast Japanese actors and musicians including Shinobu Terajima, Satsuki Nakayama, Ichikawa Somegorō VIII, Aoi Morikawa, and Yuki Matsuda. The celebrities dressed to their personality and taste, which in turn meant that Koizumi pushed his ruffle-centric designs into new territory. Namayaka, one of Japan’s first openly trans actors, wore a black suit that exploded with dark brown ruffles over a white shirt with a crystal collar. Terajima, a legend of the screen, got a cobalt ruffle dress in Koizumi’s signature strapless, full skirted shape. In between came tracksuits, capes, minidresses, and column gowns in new acid colors and neutrals.The news was the way Koizumi adapted his ruffles into trimmings rather than the main affair. Column and mermaid-hem gowns make use of tiny frills along seams, and they’re a nod to the oversized pieces that first garnered Koizumi recognition without weighing down wearers in layers of tulle organza. “My new collection is opening my new chapter, opening a new door,” he said, fantasizing about traveling to Los Angeles or New York to dress stars in his pieces. As travel regulations ease, that certainly seems feasible. Until then, there are these glamorous portraits by Koizumi’s friend, photographer Mika Ninagawa.
16 March 2022
A small benefit of the upside-down digital Fashion Week schedule is that a New Yorker can now be awoken by a Tomo Koizumi show. In the wee hours of my morning, Koizumi was half the globe around, staging a show in Kyoto’s Nijo Castle. The scene, even on the small screen of my iPhone was a blast: models in fluorescent dresses walking against a dark Japanese sky. New converts to the technicolor world of Koizumi will be arrested by the visual impact of his work: dresses supersized yet gentle, their stark silhouettes belied by the grace with which they move.In addition to their singular aesthetic, Koizumi’s creations this season also have deep meaning. He spent part of the year traveling around Kyoto, one of Japan’s oldest cities, to meet with traditional craftspeople and enlist their help on his collection. It’s a way not only to grow the Koizumi imprint, but to keep traditions alive. Beadwork, embroidery, and paint treatments are all new here, with images of cranes, phoenixes, lions, dragons, and more stitched into bodices for their talismanic potential. His organza, too, is new—or rather old, made of recycled bottles—and he’s made use of vintage kimono fabrics in the collection as well. Together it’s a more eclectic vision than we’re used to from an aesthetic purist like Koizumi, but experimentation is sure to lead him to new heights.
15 July 2021
Let’s face it, digital fashion week is a sort of stunted shorthand for the immersive and passionate experience of experiencing fashion in the flesh. Anyone who has ever attended a Tomo Koizumi live show—really more like a performance—in the Marc Jacobs store on Madison Avenue in New York knows the chills that a proper fashion moment can create, whether its Gwendoline Christie holding court in cascades of rainbow tulle or Ariel Nicholson dramatically emoting with her hair jutting straight up like Cindy Lou Who.When Tomo announced that he would be producing a look book only this season, I felt, I admit, a sharp pang of sadness. If there was anything worth donning a mask and leaving my apartment for, it’s Koizumi’s joyous confections. But the good news is he can create a look book that is just as mind-bogglingly fun.Photographed in Japan, Koizumi’s new collection continues to blend aspects of traditional Japanese culture with an eccentric exuberance. Upon collaborating with a bridal company, he found inspiration in wedding traditions, crafting white gowns with explosions of tulle around their busts, hems, even the entire dress. These more dressed-up pieces, for all their pomp and formality, might actually be some of Koizumi’s most wearable—there are plenty of brides who’d love to be covered in layers of wild tulle.The second section of his spring 2021 collection is a continuation of the rainbow-hued party clothes that originally made Koizumi famous in Japan. (Long before Western fashion caught on, Koizumi was dressing Lady Gaga and J-pop groups like Perfume.) Photographed at night, this series of taffeta bodysuits, crop tops, and minis are made with a new ruffling technique, so instead of classic zigzags, the fabric reads more dimensional, like a flower or a starburst. These, too, feel expressly wearable, especially when paired with Roger Vivier pumps, like miniature iterations of his oversized jumpsuits and popular egg-shaped capes. What’s more, this entire season is made from deadstock fabric that Koizumi sourced in Tokyo, making it as sustainable as it is fab.While I—and I’m sure many other fashion lovers—would love to see these over-the-top garments live in person, the freedom to produce on his own scale and show at his own pace is only fueling Koizumi’s creativity. “I’m really happy with it—and no stress!” he said with a laugh. “I just keep doing my own thing, I like my designs, and I’m not pushed to do different [things].” Independence has paid off.
He has a number of exciting new projects in the future, including a capsule for Emilio Pucci.
15 September 2020
“I want to make something that is not commercial,” said Tomo Koizumi before his Spring 2020 show. The designer, who caught the eye of Katie Grand on Instagram six months ago and subsequently flew to New York one week later for his debut, felt no inhibitions about so boldly bucking the trends of the American fashion landscape. He has set up shop in Marc Jacobs’s atelier and uses Jacobs’s Madison Avenue store for his shows, and in this, he has become a spiritual successor to Jacobs’s fashion for fashion’s sake mantra of late. Koizumi’s clothes are more costume than ready-to-wear, intended to provoke and inspire. To make the point, he cast model Ariel Nicholson in a one-woman show in which she dressed and undressed in seven garments, twirling and gasping to the ambient tunes that echoed throughout the store.As a display of fashion, it was breathtaking. Nicholson, the 18-year-old trans model and Raf Simons muse, projected well beyond a full painted face of glitter and a conehead ’do. As attendants dressed and undressed her in Koizumi’s ombré ensembles, sheoohedandaahed, trying to keep the audience enthralled. No disrespect to her performance, but the structure and fabrications of the garments were enough. All seven are made of hundreds of meters of ruffled Japanese polyester organza and utilize only one zipper. The construction is fascinating, with the ruffles backed by a cloth lining, suspended above each other like cascades of cake frosting. The silhouettes were pushed far beyond those of Koizumi’s debut, with jumpsuits, bodysuits, and ballooning sleeves layered under scarves of ruffles and bows. The designer said he chose the bow motif because he wanted the collection to represent his gift back to the people who made him. “I just want to bring joy,” he said simply. Mission achieved.
7 September 2019
“Is that the show for the giant dresses?” was the question heard around the fashion world this week. Tomo Koizumi is the designer, and, yes, the dresses are huge. But to write off Koizumi as a confectioner is shortsighted. Up at Marc Jacobs’s Madison Avenue store, where Koizumi held a first fashion show, put on with the help of Katie Grand, Guido Palau, Pat McGrath, Jin Soon, Tabitha Simmons, Anita Bitton, and a cast of A-list models, the Japanese designer proved his mettle.Grand had orchestrated the whole affair, having discovered Koizumi on Instagram through her friend Giles Deacon. Koizumi arrived stateside just five days ago—only his second time in New York—with three boxes of garments, some new, others from his archive. He set up shop at Marc Jacobs’s studio in Soho, where his florescent polyester organza pieces were being revived from their journey halfway around the world. In a preview, Koizumi explained his complex inspirations that range from Capucci to Leigh Bowery tohanawa, a Japanese funerary banner with plastic floral designs. He’s also very fond of Sailor Moon and the idea that a woman can be at once cute and strong. His pieces are geometrically constructed; a sleeve can be a circle or a skirt a rectangle, none more arresting than the azure disk with arm and leg holes that transforms its wearer into a blue moon. He describes his ruffles as a type of armor; unsurprisingly he has found success dressing pop stars and actresses in his native country.What role will Koizumi serve in the ready-to-wear and retail-minded American fashion scene? In the basement of the Marc Jacobs store he created a Wonderland worthy of Alice herself, where social roles were upended (even V.V.V.V.I.P. guests stood), proportions were skewed and slanted, and viewers were guided through this dreamlike narrative by white rabbits as compelling as Karen Elson, Joan Smalls, andGwendoline Christie. The fantasy, for a moment, was reality. American fashion needs that, too. As if he knew what the people who bemoaned going all the way up to 60th Street for the “giant dresses” would say, Koizumi also embellished some of the collaborative tees Jacobs made with Hey Reilly in 2018. Lady Liberty smiled on the front, while the sleeves were swallowed by cloud-like ombré ruffles. Give us your dreamers.
8 February 2019