Being a fashion designer is kind of like being the captain of a ship. There are waves of trends to ride, corporate and creative storms to weather, and a shiver of blood-hungry sharks in the water (hello from the front row).
Or maybe that’s just how Taro Horiuchi feels.
The designer, who is in his second season at Kolor after inheriting the brand from its founder Junichi Abe, spent the past few months ruminating on exactly what kind of skipper he wants to be. He had recently been taken with the 2019 movie The Lighthouse and the epic story of Moby Dick, and decided to wrangle their themes of fear, mystery and seaworthy bravery into this cleverly nautical collection that was chock-full of storytelling.
We started strong with a trio of weatherworn wool looks in storm cloud gray with lines of white pad stitching that traced up the lapels and shoulders. Layered coats, jackets and skirts were delightfully distressed. Horiuchi cited the Japanese phrase aranami ni momareru, which translates to being thrown around by rough waves, as an explanation as to why some of the distressed and deconstructed pieces looked like they’d been recovered from shipwreck survivors. “Many things are falling apart,” he said backstage afterwards. “We’re also entering the age of AI, and many things are changing right now, so we’re all on our own kind of voyage into the unknown.”
In the latter half of the collection it was as if the storm was breaking, and the moodiness of the grays and military greens began to open up into something brighter. To wit: a great pair of metallic jeans that looked like iridescent fish scales, a bright yellow fisherman duffel coat and a nylon mariner work suit that was the color of a cloudless sky. “It’s a heavy, difficult voyage, trying to reach somewhere new in the end,” said Horiuchi. So far he’s proving himself a capable navigator of fashion’s ever-choppy waters. It will be interesting to see how his voyage unfolds.
