Japanese designer Tomo Koizumi's mission to spread joy through fashion

The affable creative talks about collaborating with Dolce & Gabbana

The final look from Tomo Koizumi's Milan Fashion Week show consisted of a single dress donned by five models. Photos: Dolce & Gabbana

“I really don’t care about coolness. I think coolness is boring,” says Tomo Koizumi.

The Japanese fashion designer is at the Dolce & Gabbana headquarters in Milan, on a floor cleared out specifically for him. Around the room, women in white atelier coats are running strips of colourful fabric through sewing machines, while tables are covered in Dolce & Gabbana shoes, now sporting huge, colourful bows. To one side, an enormous multicoloured blanket lies draped over multiple clothes rails.

Running down the side of the room are more rails, bursting with frothy gowns in blasts of hot pink, neon yellow, orange and acid green. Oversized, amorphous and made of densely packed ruffles, they are joyous and playful.

As he waves a hand at the bulging rails, he explains why he isn’t bothered about being one of the it-crowd. “I really want to bring something more. I mean, if someone sees my designs, I want them to smile, to be laughing. This is what I want to bring to people.”

The irony, of course, is that Koizumi is currently one of the hottest names in fashion and, when we speak, is only days from his Milan Fashion Week debut, which is being funded and supported by Dolce & Gabbana. In addition to providing a show space, the atelier we are standing in, the Italian fashion house shipped in all of the looks from Tokyo, where Koizumi lives, and allowed him to use its signature Caretto fabric and handmade flowers from its Alta Moda collection. That a brand the size of Dolce & Gabbana is so publicly backing him, proves he has something special to offer.

Koizumi seems unfazed. “The [Dolce & Gabbana] office asked me what I wanted, and I told them everything. I couldn’t choose between it all,” he laughs. Even the seamstresses finishing the collection are on loan.

By anyone’s standards, this is an extraordinary opportunity, particularly for a designer who was virtually unheard of in the West until about four years ago. Having founded his eponymous brand in Tokyo in 2012, fresh from college, he worked as a costume designer before he started his line.

In 2016, Lady Gaga wore one of his pieces in Japan, but his big break came when British designer Giles Deacon found him on Instagram in 2019. Impressed by the larger-than-life dresses on the feed, Deacon showed them to British stylist Katie Grand, who in turn persuaded Marc Jacobs to loan Koizumi his show space. Only weeks later, Koizumi debuted his autumn/winter 2019 collection at New York Fashion Week, with Joan Smalls, Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid and actress Gwendoline Christie as models in a show engineered and styled by Grand, who called in industry stalwarts Guido Palau for hair and Pat McGrath for make-up.

Filled with colourful, cocoon-shaped pieces, Koizumi’s show was unlike anything else. Footage of Christie descending a staircase in a bulbous mermaid dress, made from thousands of ruffles in yellow, teal and pink, quickly went viral, making the designer a breakout star. Since then, he has collaborated with Pucci on a range of ruffle-covered T-shirts and had two of his gowns exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which also purchased one of his pieces for its permanent collection. In 2020, he was a finalist for the LVMH Prize.

Koizumi’s presence in Milan can also be traced back to Grand. “I only do custom-made clothes, so I had thought about maybe doing something in Paris, because everyone goes to Paris. I called Katie, asking, can we work together again, and she replied with the idea of working with Dolce & Gabbana. So, I said yes, quickly,” he says.

Having worked with Dolce & Gabbana when it supported two previous new-name talents last year – Sohee Park in February and Matty Bovan in September – it was Grand who recommended Koizumi to the Italian design duo. “She suggested me and luckily I was chosen. Now this is happening,” he smiles, gesturing around the room.

As well as displaying his latest collection in Milan, Koizumi also presented some of his archive pieces, dating back to 2016, including the outfit worn by Lady Gaga and dresses from his New York debut and July 2021 show in Kyoto, Japan. “That was actually suggested by Domenico [Dolce],” Koizumi explains. “He said to me: ‘Designers are copying your style, so you have to show that you are the original.’”

With no formal training in fashion – he studied art at college – Koizumi admits that he has learnt dressmaking the hard way. “This is all self-taught, so my technique was really limited at first. I have learned from my friends and as I have tried new designs, and that’s how I have developed my technique. Now it’s become my signature. I don’t want to make anything boring. I want it to be fun, funny, unique.”

That quest for uniqueness means fulsome, rounded shapes, inspired, he says, by the “beauty of nature, organic shapes and organic lines”. His work is bulbous, outlandish even, with no straight lines or hard edges and where waists are, at best, a suggestion.

Working more by instinct than design, Koizumi admits that he doesn’t sketch out a collection ahead of time, but instead lets the process of making inspire the results. However, even this approach is open ended. “I want to work with a free mind,” he says.

Case in point, he holds up a length of brilliant yellow froth. “I don’t know how to use this. I will think about the styling with Katie, but it can be a cape or a train for a skirt.”

One of Koizumi’s other recent projects was dressing singer Sam Smith, who memorably stepped out of a helicopter in the music video for I’m Not Here to Make Friends in a floor-length, bubblegum-pink gown by Koizumi. “[Smith’s] stylist emailed me,” he recalls. “It was the middle of November, so I didn’t have much time – just about two weeks to make and ship it.”

The singer is taller than Koizumi, but is about the same size, the designer says. “So I was able to do the fittings on myself before shipping it.”

The piece, aptly named The Biggest Dress, is theatrically oversized and made from more than 200 metres of bright pink organza, packed into tight folds. “It’s quite heavy. When you wear it it’s fine, but when you hold it, it’s heavy.”

For the show in Milan, Koizumi used metres of fabric featuring Dolce & Gabbana’s signature Caretto print, sculpted into extravagant sleeves and a circle skirt, and adorned with copious amounts of handmade flowers. He also crafted corsets from colourful ribbons, an homage, he says, to the “sexy, glamorous vibe” of Dolce & Gabbana, but also a nod to his earliest days as a designer.

“At the beginning, I made body-con dresses, because I didn’t have the technique to make a bigger dress, so this is back to my start,” he admits.

His use of colour – something of a trademark now – is reflective of his world view. “I want to use every colour in the swatch book, because for me this is expressing inclusivity. It’s representing everyone.”

While the fashion world is falling at Koizumi’s feet, he admits he also misses art. “I majored in art at university, so I am going back to the beginning. I started painting again last year, and I am going to have a solo show in Tokyo at the end of this year. I already have a gallery to help me in Japan.”

Will this be a parallel career, accelerating as quickly as his fashion credentials? Only time will tell, but Koizumi’s cheerful demeanour is clearly instrumental in shaping his destiny. Everywhere he goes, people seem to want to work with him and help him out. Designers Dolce and Gabbana have spoken about how much they love Koizumi’s work, because it is shaped by “joy, this love for life”.

Three days after we speak, the audience is grinning ear to ear as Koizumi’s show unfolds and, as the final look arrives, the crowd bursts into cheers and applause. The big, rainbow “blanket” I had seen in the studio has been transformed into a giant, colourful caterpillar – a singular look worn by five models.

Everyone is smiling and laughing and the energy is a delight. Koizumi’s desire to make people happy is clearly coming to fruition. “That’s because I am having fun,” he says with a laugh.