Noir Kei Ninomiya RTW Spring 2018

Kei Ninomiya opened his fall show with a white dress, its organdi accordions edged in black. For a designer whose stock in trade is that dark hue, it looked like a radical departure. It was not so. “For me, the white was more of a transparent image, like air or space. I had the image of a black thread, and of making the black a very small part of the garment,” he said after the show.

So it follows that this thread grew from being akin to scribbles, to drawing the outline of a jacket. The white receded — PVC macramé harnesses framing the bust — then disappeared altogether. The heart of the collection featured all-black long dresses with voluminous sleeves layered with pleated pinafores, knits created by threading yarn through eyelets on a leather structure before knitting and a biker jacket bedecked in flowering loops of ribbon.

Then the thread unspooled as a honeycomb held together by black leather tabs appeared, giving the impression of a garment exploding outwards. White tulle was pushed through a net of fabric strips, carving cocoonlike volumes.

The final look was a rigid tutu, fabric and PVC melded into a solid dish that the model had to tilt to squeeze out of backstage. It was “to create a volume and make a pure atmosphere,” he said. It was breathtaking.

Launch Gallery: Noir Kei Ninomiya RTW Spring 2018

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