It is hard to believe anything Tomo Koizumi says.
How a Tokyo-based costume designer gets plucked from Instagram last month by Katie Grand, who offers to style a runway show at Marc Jacobs’ New York store, sounds like the wind-up for a joke. The fact that he set out to be a junior high school art teacher only makes their last-minute plans more baffling and impressive. But it is all true, true, true. By Tuesday morning, Koizumi was jet lag-free in Jacobs’ SoHo offices and 24 hours later he was up for an interview in the airy downtown space.
Surrounded by racks of the voluminous kaleidoscopic-colored designs he brought from Tokyo, Koizumi took a break from steaming, while his sister Yuka and a friend kept at it. To make the journey to New York, all of these confectioneries had somehow been stuffed into the three slightly battered boxes that were stacked in a corner. However jack-in-the-box that might sound, Koizumi described packing like rolling up a sleeping bag. “Yeah, it’s a bit extreme. But it is very light,” the 30-year-old said.
“I’m still not sure I’m in the fashion industry,” he said flatly.
“You might feel it at seven o’clock Friday night,” Grand said laughing.
Echoing
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