Junichi Abe

On 25 January 2025, Junichi Abe announced that he would step down as Kolor’s head designer and move into an advisory role. The change ended twenty-one years of direct creative leadership while preserving the founder’s involvement during the house’s first succession.

Kolor began a multi-season collaboration with adidas in 2015, applying its asymmetric construction and colour rhythm to technical running and training apparel. Climaheat, Climachill, Boost and other performance systems gave the project a functional basis, while Abe’s panel work and material combinations kept it connected to the main house.

Pitti Uomo invited Kolor as guest menswear designer for its 84th edition in June 2013. The presentation at the Sferisterio in Florence confirmed the international reach of Junichi Abe’s label beyond the Paris calendar.

Junichi Abe received the 30th Mainichi Fashion Grand Prize in 2012, the same year Kolor entered the Paris menswear runway calendar. The award documented the domestic standing of a practice that had grown from Tokyo product development into sustained international presentation.

Junichi Abe received the 30th Mainichi Fashion Grand Prize in 2012. The award recognised the sustained development of Kolor’s textile-led ready-to-wear and its growing international position as the house entered the Paris runway calendar.

In January 2012, Kolor moved from Paris presentations onto the official menswear runway calendar. The shift gave Junichi Abe’s hybrid tailoring, technical fabrics and controlled asymmetry a larger international platform and established the house as a regular fashion-week presence.

Junichi Abe introduced kolor BEACON in 2012, with the first products marketed for Spring/Summer 2013. The sub-line separated product development from the main collection’s runway premise, allowing outerwear, casual clothing and accessories to be built around individual fabric and construction ideas.

By 2010, Kolor had formalised womenswear as a distinct part of the business after initially developing the label through mixed and menswear-led collections. The expansion brought Abe’s fabric contrasts, layered construction and irregular colour relationships into a dedicated women’s line.

Kolor opened its Minami-Aoyama flagship in Tokyo in August 2009. The store gave the label a permanent retail setting for its menswear, womenswear and accessories as international distribution expanded beyond the presentation circuit.

Kolor began presenting in Paris in 2008, introducing Junichi Abe’s fabric-led menswear to an international buying and press audience. The move established a sustained European presence several years before the label entered the formal runway calendar.

Kolor released its first collection for Spring/Summer 2005, the first public seasonal expression of the label Abe had founded in May 2004. The collection established a product-led system of mixed fabrics, offbeat colour and hybrid casual tailoring that would later move onto the Paris calendar.

ppCM was mutually dissolved in 2004 after a decade of activity, and its founders moved into separate projects. Abe established Kolor the same year, carrying his emphasis on textile development and garment construction into a solo label.

Junichi Abe founded Kolor in Tokyo in May 2004 after the mutual dissolution of ppCM. Across two decades he developed the house through mixed textiles, offbeat colour, hybrid tailoring and sportswear, expanding from a domestic product-led label into a regular Paris runway presence while retaining close control of its design system.

In 1994, Abe co-founded M-A-W-S Design Productions and ppCM with Akinori Morita, Taku Watanabe and Soga, all former Bunka classmates. The label favoured fabric development and durable casual clothing over runway-driven seasonal spectacle, giving Abe his first independent design structure.

After leaving Comme des Garçons, Abe co-founded ppCM with Akinori Morita, Taku Watanabe and Soga under M-A-W-S Design Productions. The label avoided a conventional runway rhythm and concentrated on proprietary textiles, casual clothing and garments intended to remain useful beyond a single season, establishing several concerns that later carried into Kolor.

Within the Comme des Garçons system, Abe joined Junya Watanabe’s emerging team and handled patterns for Watanabe’s debut collection. He remained in that environment before leaving in 1994 to establish ppCM with three former Bunka classmates.

Abe moved from Y’s to Comme des Garçons in 1989 and continued as a womenswear patternmaker. The studio exposed him to reconstruction, circular pattern experiments and a working culture in which patternmaking could carry substantial design authorship.

Abe joined Comme des Garçons in 1989, first working with Tricot before moving into the team built around Junya Watanabe. The period sharpened his pattern-cutting practice and placed him inside a studio culture where technical fabric, workwear and disrupted construction were treated as systems rather than seasonal effects.

After three years at Bunka Fashion College, Junichi Abe took his first fashion-industry job at Y’s, joining planning as a designer candidate. He began with fabric swatch records before moving into womenswear patternmaking, establishing a technical discipline that remained central to his later work.