“I’m always making special occasion clothes,” says Tomo Koizumi over the phone from Tokyo, on the day his spring/summer 2021 collection is unveiled in lookbook form during New York Fashion Week. It sort of goes without saying. The Japanese designer’s candy-coloured tulle explosions are not for popping to the shops in. It’s also why Koizumi’s new foray into bridalwear makes perfect sense.

His spring/summer 2021 collection is divided into two sections. The first, a collaboration with the Japanese bridal atelier Treat Maison, is made up of exuberant gowns that combine Koizumi’s trademark joyful ruffles with elements of Japanese bridal tradition, such as the wedding kimono. “There’s a word, hanayome, it means ‘flower bride’. This word inspired me a lot,” Koizumi explains. “The modern Japanese wedding dress is often all white, but the traditional one has a lot of colours, reds and golds, and embroidery and painting. They’re really beautiful and really unique, and I wanted to take that as inspiration for my new collection.”

Bridal is typically where designers “go big”. But next to the mountain of colourful, cascading frills that Gwendoline Christie modelled in a then unknown Koizumi’s inaugural autumn/winter 2019 show, the designer’s wedding dresses, elaborate as they are, look positively pared-back by comparison. “They’re a bit more wearable,” he agrees. “I was a costume designer for nine years, but weddings are different. These clothes aren’t only for celebrities.”

That said, it likely won’t be long before we see a look from the second half of the collection – which is all Koizumi’s and crafted entirely from deadstock fabric – on one of the designer’s many famous customers. (Lady Gaga was commissioning Koizumi long before the rest of the world woke up to his euphoric confections.) It’s made up of just the sort of rainbow frills that put him on the map, fashioned into a fuchsia and orange mini-dress with matching headdress, and a tan and orange one-piece that has fan Katy Perry’s name all over it.

This New York Fashion Week must feel rather different for the designer behind the spectacular viral debut staged at Marc Jacobs’s Madison Avenue flagship for autumn/winter 2020, but Koizumi, who is just back from the gym when we speak, is sanguine about the changes wrought by Covid-19. “It’s sad, but it’s the same for everyone,” he says, adding that his made-to-order business model means he hasn’t been as badly impacted by the pandemic as some of his peers. “I know a lot of really great young designers are struggling for cash flow, and it seems so stressful and painful. I feel like I’ve been lucky.”

A six-month lockdown in Tokyo also provided Koizumi with something of a breather after the non-stop whirlwind of international travel that followed his autumn/winter 2019 showcase (“I went to London five times last year!”). In addition to developing a new fascination with classical Kabuki theatre, the designer used the enforced down-time to experiment with new techniques and materials. “I can make a ruffle with any fabric now,” he says, proudly. Good news for his army of frill-seeking admirers.