Even though Toga designer Yasuko Furuta grew up in southern Japan and continues to base her business out of Tokyo, she’s always felt an affinity with British fashion. (After showing remotely for several years due to the pandemic, today felt like the designer’s proper return to London, after testing the waters by coming back to stage an intimate show here last season.) Furuta remembers visiting the city while studying in Paris and being struck by the DIY spirit of how people dressed—in particular, seeing a puffer jacket that was falling apart at the seams but that its resourceful owner had patched back together with Scotch tape. “It felt very exciting,” she said after her show today. “But I also love the traditional tailoring here too. It’s a place where the old meets the new.”
As ever, Furuta had questions to interrogate: In this case, whether the codes of formalwear are now entirely redundant. (It felt especially fitting, then, that the collection was shown in a stark-white space at the Royal Academy of Arts, just around the corner from the mecca of British tailoring that is Savile Row.) And as a designer who has long operated at a place beyond the gender binary, it was only natural that some of those pieces would challenge—or at least question—the relevance of those codes in 2025.
The show opened with a pair of looks that featured undone bow ties slung around the neck, which took their cue from the photographer William Eggleston’s personal style; Furuta described his unorthodox method of wearing a tie as a kind of “rebellion against formal dress—one which differs from dressing casually or wearing a T-shirt with a statement.” Elsewhere, gray jackets in traditional suiting fabric were cinched at the waist by inbuilt belts, and classic white office shirts featured oversized collars that sprouted from the neck and fell over the lapels. Blazers were twisted and reversed, with necklines made from layers of thin wool sliced into undulating curves to form a kind of elegant squiggle across the chest. A playful series of looks toward the end of the show took the stark black and white of a tuxedo and warped it into off-kilter (but still profoundly feminine) eveningwear, such as sheer skirts with sprouts of fabric like shaggy white flowers and a draped tunic dress worn by a male model that revealed a chintzy floral pattern when it rustled by.
What made it all come into focus? Not just the level of refinement and the visible quality of the materials and construction, which were especially noticeable amid the gung-ho, DIY spirit of many of the younger designers on the London Fashion Week schedule. It was also a subtle showcase for Furuta’s sense of humor, whether in the punkish cigarette lighter necklaces or the styling of Asics dad trainers with some of the tailored looks. (On the subject of shoes, there were some seriously covetable heels here, with bows made from knotted leather.) It’s always a pleasure to step into Furuta’s topsy-turvy world—and it’s easy to understand why her loyal customers never want to leave.
