Fashion

It’s late in the season to be showing a collection, but Tao Kurihara, much like her mentor Rei Kawakubo, isn’t one to follow the crowd. The enigmatic designer, who now shows each season to a small domestic audience at the Comme des Garçons HQ in Aoyama, represents the most romantic side of the CDG stable. It’s also commercially minded in its way, managing to wrangle the whimsical into the wearable.

Accompanied by a chipper folksy soundtrack, this outing was full of big, confident shapes that snapped consummately between monochrome, dowdy neutrals and sweeps of sugary pastels. Towards the middle of the show we moved into stripes and gingham, spread monochrome and mime-like in different scales across big skirts, roomy trousers, and tiny jackets. Later, those gingham skirts that faded into sepia orange like an old photograph. For those who want to shop Comme off the runway, Tao is the best place to do it. Particularly in this collection, there were plenty of pieces that Comme devotees will enjoy, from the cropped flared jackets with Peter Pan collars, to the dotty floral dresses and peasant skirts.

Occasionally Tao shows instances of breaking away from the dominant aesthetic of the house she grew up in, but this season seemed to have committed to it wholeheartedly. Her show notes disagreed: “This time, I focused on creating the collection that stays true to Tao’s style—and to myself,” she wrote. Perhaps resisting it is futile: from the patterns to the silhouettes, the brand’s bloodline is clear.

There is a sensitivity to Kurihara’s work, however, of which she alone is capable. Some of the more striking pieces this season were created using prints of Fumi Imamura’s floral artworks, which came decorated with scarlet poppies across pouffy sheer skirts and cape-like shirts. They looked charmingly grannyish, and softly romantic in a way designed to please the wearer rather than the viewer. Per Kurihara: “I hope that by wearing them, one can carry the gentleness and strength [Imamura’s] work embodies.” That’s Tao in a nutshell, too: gentleness and strength. The delicate, the feminine, the flouncy—in a world that increasingly tries to quash those things, it’s timely to remember the power they hold. Bold yet balanced, Kurihara wields that power masterfully.