Thrills And Frills At Tomo Koizumi’s First Show In Singapore

The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands staged a one-night-only fashion extravaganza featuring Tomo Koizumi, the Japanese designer famed for his voluminous, ruffled dresses in super saturated hues. In a few short years since his debut on the international fashion stage, Koizumi has dressed the likes of Lady Gaga, Bjork, Sam Smith and Lil Nas X. His work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and shown as part of its Costume Institute’s exhibition on Camp. 

Although Koizumi creates only custom pieces and doesn’t produce ready-to-wear, his work has proven to have global visual appeal. The designer has shown in New York, Milan, Paris, and now Singapore––with this latest show inaugurating Front Row 2023, the fashion-forward programme by The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, aimed at bringing the world’s brightest fashion talents to our sunny shores.

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“Over the years, The Shoppes has had the privilege of working with some of the most talented fashion designers of our time to showcase their works, whether through past fashion weeks or bespoke events for our luxury shoppers. It cannot be more fitting for us to kick off Front Row 2023 with the prolific Tomo Koizumi, one of Japan’s most outstanding fashion designers, known for his larger-than-life ruffled dresses that are as bright as his personality,” said Hazel Chan, Senior Vice President of Retail at Marina Bay Sands.

The setting for this special event was the club Marquee, transformed for a single night with a raised runway right in its centre. The city’s best-dressed showed up to take in Koizumi’s delightfully frothy confections; guests included Japanese actresses Ayaka Miyoshi and Nicole Ishida who flew in just for the occasion, as well as local celebrities such as our June 2023 cover star Iman Fandi, Julie Tan, Xu Bin, Zong Zijie, Glenn Goh and Timothee Yap.

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The show itself was a medley of Koizumi’s greatest hits. Clocking in at almost 30 looks, it was one of Koizumi’s largest runway outings ever, with pieces ranging from his fall/winter 2019 debut to next season’s spring/summer 2024 collection, which was just presented in Paris weeks ago. With his oeuvre so far shown as a whole, one could see just how the designer has grown. While the use of hand-ruffled organza is a constant—rightfully so, as it has become an indelible Tomo Koizumi signature—the designer is also always experimenting with colour and form in each of his collections. 

The spring/summer 2024 collection, in particular, marked the next step in the designer’s evolution, in which he treated his monumental dresses as a sort of blank canvas for his Abstract Expressionist paintings. With his hands, Koizumi slicked and smeared oils and acrylics onto organza, creating what looked like mottled, abstract renderings of flowers––both in bloom and in decay. Despite the supersized scale of the dresses, there was a delicateness to them thanks to this new technique.

The collection coincides with the designer entering a new phase of his career: that of an artist—for which he actually trained for, in a full circle moment—working in the realm between soft sculpture and painting. Later this year, the designer will be having his first gallery show in Tokyo, in which some of the spring/summer 2024 dresses will be repurposed as wall-hung art. Keep an eye out: Tomo Koizumi is going places.