It’s bright and early on a cloudy autumn morning in Tokyo, and on the seventh floor of Comme Des Garçons’ headquarters is the dark room where Tao Kurihara has shown her collections. Tao’s rustic, folksy vibe sets her apart as the earthiest designer in the Comme stable, and her clothes are the most unabashedly girly (perhaps with the exception of the Comme des Garçons Girl line). But where the CDG girl is neat and tidy and shows up to class on time with her neatly pressed Peter Pan collared shirts and schoolgirl skirts, Tao’s damsel has run away with the fairies to live in the forest.
That quirky sense of whimsy felt particularly powerful in this collection, which was inspired by Tove Jansson, the Finnish artist and author best known as the creator of The Moomins. Unsurprisingly, The Moomins are big in Japan (a quick look at the website shows more Moomin stores in Japan than anywhere else in the world), and 2024 will mark 80 years since Jansson first brought them into the world . If that sounds like foreshadowing a collab collection of thinly veiled Moomin merch, you don’t know Tao.
“I created this collection in the hope that by printing and wearing Jansson’s beautiful and powerful drawings on fabric, I could generate new ideas,” read the show notes. While a lesser designer might have stuck the characters verbatim onto the clothes, Kurihara dug deep into Jansson’s knowledge and transformed the artist’s self-portraits (cigarette in mouth) into giant polka dots and harlequin prints on vividly bright dirndl skirts – and, while not seen on the runway, the flop-nosed character Snork, an early Moomin prototype, printed on T-shirts and tote bags. The colors, too, were sometimes reminiscent of the woodsy, organic tones of Jansson’s work, with Finnish landscapes and sweeping floral prints on cotton dresses, often twisted and spliced with tulle ruffles so that they bulge into that bottom-heavy, unmistakable Comme silhouette. .
Later came a few white looks, enlivened as usual with broderie anglaise and asymmetrical ruffles, followed by gray tailored jackets that became increasingly mutilated (but so beautiful) with ruffles running across the shoulders and chest. The final looks consisted of rich layers of stormy colored tulle and sheer metallic fabric, reprinted with Jansson’s smoking vignette. It was as unique an interpretation of the Moomin Valley as one could hope for, and showcased Kurihara’s talent for deftly shaping her inspirations into the Comme universe.
Kurihara clearly comes from the Rei Kawakubo school of design, right down to the way she talks about “generating new ideas” through the dissonance of putting things together. She joined the company in 1997, just a year after graduating from Saint Martins, and of all the designers in the Comme family, she seems to be the closest to the matriarch in taste and sensibility – and also in her ability to commercialize the artsy and whimsical feeling. realistic. Still, it would be interesting to see Tao color further beyond the lines Kawakubo has written. To quote Kurihara herself about why she was inspired by Jansson: “She lived her life without forgetting her own independence and freedom.” Words to live by.