By Seth Khouri
The starting point has long been one of fashion’s most seductive revelations—a moment where the designer briefly pulls back the veil. Sometimes it’s explicit, a thesis threaded neatly through each look; at other times it lingers more obliquely, revealed only to those willing to search for it. For Yasuko Furuta, creative director of Toga, that point of departure arrives as a triptych of words. For AW26: Pull. Crumple. Pressed. These verbs read less as instructions and more as tensions—gestures that describe not only fabric, but the body within it. Furuta set out to examine the ways clothing is shaped by pressure: how garments stretch, crease, submit, or resist. In turn, the collection becomes a quiet meditation on adaptation; on whether we, too, bend or hold firm within an ever-accelerating cultural landscape.
Across thirty-eight looks, familiar codes were destabilised. Button-downs, fur coats, plaid suiting and billowing trousers formed the backbone, punctuated by flirtatious flashes of sequins and plastic. Look 4 offered a cropped brown fur coat layered over a sky-blue shirt, its right collar jutting outward with deliberate insouciance (a gesture reminiscent of Jonathan Anderson’s recent menswear experiments at Dior). Grey straight-leg wool trousers grounded the look, cinched by a narrow leather belt.
Styling, as ever with Toga, proved decisive. Leather gloves sharpened silhouettes; shirts were flipped, twisted, and knotted at the waist. There was an intentional undone-ness throughout; cropped suiting trousers punctured with buttons, collars skewed and asymmetrical, hems left hovering in a state of near-disarray. Garments appeared mid-action, as though caught between being pulled and pressed. Colour, too, carried the narrative. While deep winter tones anchored the collection, euphoric flashes of emerald and sky blue cut through with near-optimistic clarity—spring interrupting winter’s stoicism. Look 8 distilled this interplay: a cream long-sleeve shirt crossed with black belts and finished with exaggerated fur cuffs, paired with voluminous white trousers. A cherry-red bag (echoed in the model’s earrings and twin pom-poms perched at each hip) injected a jolt of irreverence.
In conclusion, Furuta’s AW26 offering does not scream transformation; it studies it. Through subtle distortions and tactile tension, Pull. Crumple. Pressed. becomes less about construction and more about condition; a reflection of garments, and perhaps people, caught between resistance and release.
