Introduction
Taro Horiuchi is a Tokyo-born Japanese fashion designer and the creative director of Kolor. He moved to the United Kingdom at fifteen, studied photography at Kingston University and graduated from the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2007, finishing at the top of his class and receiving the Diesel Award at International Talent Support.
Horiuchi launched his namesake womenswear label for Spring/Summer 2010 and later established the menswear project th products. He was appointed to succeed Junichi Abe at Kolor in January 2025 and debuted with the co-ed Spring/Summer 2026 collection “Time Travel”. Autumn/Winter 2026 deepened the transition through weathered maritime references, while Spring/Summer 2027 “Aliens” used distorted business dress and questions of estrangement to define a more confident authorial position inside the house.
Design ethos
Horiuchi’s work is informed by art, architecture, photography and the material traces of time. Basic garments are refined through proportion, surface and small structural displacement, with an emphasis on clothes that appear restrained at first and reveal their construction gradually.
At Kolor, he has retained the house’s hybrid language while giving each season a clearer narrative frame. Tailoring becomes androgynous or slightly uncanny; fabric may be aged, wrinkled, frayed or marked by exposed pad stitching; familiar garments are placed inside cinematic or speculative worlds without collapsing into costume.
The approach is less dependent on Abe’s accumulated colour clashes and more concerned with atmosphere, psychological distance and the relationship between a newcomer and an inherited system. Its success depends on preserving Kolor’s product intelligence while allowing the collection to carry Horiuchi’s own sense of image and narrative.
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Career history
2025
Taro Horiuchi was appointed to succeed Junichi Abe as Kolor’s creative director in January 2025. His tenure retains the house’s fabric mixing, skewed tailoring and sportswear construction while introducing more explicit narrative frameworks, androgynous proportion and surfaces marked by ageing, weather and image-making.
2019
Horiuchi established th products as a menswear project centred on refined, durable wardrobe forms. The line narrowed his interest in proportion and construction into a quieter product system, creating a useful counterpoint to the more narrative work he later brought to Kolor.
2010
Horiuchi launched his namesake label for Spring/Summer 2010 after periods in London, Antwerp and Paris. The womenswear project developed a restrained language informed by art, architecture and textile surface, giving basic garments new proportion and detail without relying on decorative excess.
2007
Taro Horiuchi graduated at the top of his class from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2007 and received the Diesel Award at International Talent Support in the same year. His education joined fashion design to an earlier background in photography and established the art, image and construction interests that would shape his later labels.
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