Yahoo Lifestyle Junichi Abe Is Stepping Down From Kolor
PARIS – Kolor is closing a chapter.
After 21 years, founder and designer Junichi Abe is stepping down as head designer of the brand. He revealed his retirement at the fall 2025 show, closing with a lap around the runway and a bow.
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Entering the Space Neimeyer, where the show was held, each guest was given a handwritten letter.
“This will be a special moment for me, because it will be my last show as Kolor head designer. Even after this season, I’ll stay to support Kolor from the inside. Thank you for all these years, and I hope we will have your continued support for Kolor.”
Abe will stay on with the brand as an adviser. A successor and new designer “will be announced very soon,” a representative for the brand said.
Guests were also gifted a T-shirt that read, “Thank you and farewell.”
Abe founded the house in 2004 based on classic sportswear as part of the Japanese wave. Kolor’s first show in Paris was the Fall 2012 season. e launched an ongoing collaboration with Adidas in 2015.
He is known for his meticulous attention to detail and inventive use of textures and layering, with an architectural approach to minimalism, all with a sportswear bent. Abe paid special attention to tailoring and craft to construct men’s and women’s collections.
Abe studied at Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College and then worked as a patternmaker at Yohji Yamamoto and Comme de Garçons, before he moved to Junya Watanabe. He launched the label PPCM in 1994, going on to found Kolor 10 years later. He is also married to Sacai designer Chitose Abe.
In recent collections he had been exploring nostalgia, and had rediscovered his love of skiing and the outdoors.
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