Was the first look a camp executioner, a BDSM ballerina or a dark fencer? The abstract complexity of Kei Ninomiya’s artistry defies characterization: it is a mood. This collection featured a sultry heart-to-heart between metal and skin, accentuated by the metallic makeup that bloomed across the models’ faces (when not shrouded) and visible when you looked at the shiny metal strips with sawn edges and underwire clips that tied the leather and fabric outfits together. The guttural soundtrack – a kind of shallow whale song – was perfectly chosen.
After that opener, the first part seemed to begin a dark subversion of male evening wear. The black and white of the nightwear was drawn in and out, then completely reimagined into looks that exposed the architecture rather than the facade. Elastic suspenders of an almost baroque level of complication, shirts and skirts in latticework tulle, harnesses and an inside-out tuxedo. There was, of course, a completely crashed and custom motorcycle jacket. The striped socks that accentuated some looks were almost comically conventional, Pippi Longstocking curveballs.
A ‘dress’ made of white collars and cuffs with ruffles and sometimes black tulle marked the shift to Ninomiya’s signature métier: creating visible auras. These required metaphors, which alternately resembled loofahs, minimalist floral arrangements, kitchen scourers, callistemon plants, or a magician’s puffs of smoke. They were fascinating to watch pass and represented a return to Ninomiya’s Noir origins: the color of the past seasons was gone. This designer inhabits his own space, and lots of it. This was another technically dazzling, imaginative tour de force.
