From the very first look, this Tao show made its organising principle unmistakable. Held, as has become customary, at the Comme des Garçons Aoyama headquarters, it opened with giant gingham circles patched together in baby pink and blue to form voluminous tops and skirts — and the circle, in some form, never really left after that.

The inspiration was Dutch artist Ruth van Beek, whose softly abstract paintings often feature cutout shapes in pastel colours. Tao Kurihara took Van Beek’s signature motif and used it as a structural foundation, incorporating it directly into garment patterns to explore new forms. Rounded hems and wavy back yokes appeared on red and black tailoring. Clown-coloured dresses followed. Skirts layered under circular shearling tops. Prints of giant polka dots contained checked patterns within them — a geometric opposition held inside an ovular silhouette. Hats bubbled upward like flower petals. The whole thing unfolded under candy floss hair to a soundtrack that drifted from folksy bells into synth-soaked trombones.

Van Beek herself has said she returns to the circle and oval because it “feels very human” — and the circle does, of course, carry its own philosophical weight: eternity, the cyclical nature of life, a halo, an egg, the symbol used in genetic family trees to represent the female. Whether Kurihara was drawing on all of that as she designed, or whether the collection was primarily a rigorous exercise in pattern making, is left pleasingly open by the show notes, which were short and sweet as usual.

Either way, it was an especially bright and playful collection — joyful even by Tao’s standards, which is saying something. Kurihara may operate somewhat quietly within the larger Comme apparatus, but her talent is impossible to miss.

Tao TOKYO FALL 2026 collection