By Cara Livingstone

Tomo Koizumi’s path to NYFW has been probably the most magical in terms of introduction to impact. Plucked from relative obscurity by Katie Grand, his ascent to the pantheons of NY fashion has been an interesting exploration of celebrity culture and the power of such cultural trends to dictate aesthetic pleasures for the masses (or at least the New York IT crowd). So Koizumi’s second collection presented during NYFW this cycle came with an added novelty and a bit of dread of falling into a sense of manufactured genius.

Koizumi deftly bypassed all that American Idiol-esque shortcuts that brought him here and produced quite possibly one of the most outstanding exploration of ruffled fabric. With hundreds of meters of ruffled Japanese polyester organza, utilized with only one zipper, his work spoke volumes of his genius. It was almost like finding out that an American idol winner is actually David Bowie in drag.

The beauty of the layered ruffles along with a sense of levity of his costumes (they cannot be classified as everyday wear), made Tomo Koizumi’s second collection devoid of novelty and brimming with genius.