TAAKK SS26
"We got T-Shirts!" I excitedly told JP when we took our seats at the SS26 TAAKK show. Always the perfect ending to my PFW season TAAKK presented an introspective and quietly radical meditation on what it means to create. Designer Takuya Morikawa presented not only garments but a philosophy, a pursuit of creation distilled to its purest essence.
TAAKK has always lived in the in-betweens; between everyday wear and art, between necessity and disruption. SS26 pushed these dualities forward with a sharp clarity, proposing that clothing need not be defined by category, but by emotion and the fleeting sense it leaves behind. Silhouettes felt familiar, yet they carried what Morikawa calls “the tiny quirk", a subtle dissonance that lingers just at the edges of recognition, awakening fresh perspective. It is within that space of “almost known” that TAAKK finds electricity.
True to its DNA, the collection leaned heavily on TAAKK’s exceptional mastery of materials, each piece a convergence of technique and imagination. Beneath the surface beauty, what shone through was process; thread, weave, dye, embroidery. It is in these quiet labors of artisanship that TAAKK liberates itself, dismantling existing notions of fabric in order to reconstruct them into something altogether unfamiliar. Two textile stories stood out as carriers of this philosophy, the evolution of sculptural embroidery and the expansion of TAAKK’s iconic gradient fabric.
Past seasons have seen TAAKK experiment with embroidery beyond decoration. This time, SS26 gave us embroidery as structure. Boldly dimensional, it rose from the surface of garments in tactile, almost architectural form. What was once abstract has now shifted into figurative, weaving narrative and meaning into the surface of cloth. These embroideries felt less like ornament and more like sculpture, garments that engage not only the eyes but the spatial memory of the body.
While gradients have long been a TAAKK signature, this season morphed the concept beyond color. SS26 explored gradients of function. Broadcloth shirts dissolving into pinstriped suiting, tailored jackets fading seamlessly into shirting textiles. Materials melted from one category into another, blurring distinctions between the formal and the casual. In these moments, convention collapsed. The lines between “shirt” and “suit” erased and new, experimental realities of dress were born.
Standing before this collection, one senses that Morikawa is chasing an almost impossible ideal, the pure essence of creation. The garments feel less like an end point than a glimpse into a greater imagination that still lies just beyond reach. Each piece, though intentional, is framed by what remains unseen, the vast expanse of ideas that could not yet take physical form.
As the lights dimmed at Paris Fashion Week, the SS26 collection felt less like a statement and more like a continuation of a journey; a path carved by years of trial, error, and relentless curiosity. For TAAKK, fashion is not about answers, but questions. And in that space of uncertainty lies its quiet power.
TAAKK website
