Although it’s true that fashion week is finally over, there’s one show in particular that’s still on our minds: Noir Kei Ninomiya Fall 2020. Each season, the Japanese designer (part of the Comme des Garçons brand family), creates some of the most spellbinding pieces, and Fall 2020 was no exception.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the brand, it was created by Kei Ninomiya, under the mentorship of Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo. Ninomiya studied French literature at Aoyama University in Tokyo, later studying at the infamous Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp — where he started working at Comme des Garcons as a pattern maker over the summer, eventually dropping out of school to pursue his career. Just four years later, Kawakubo helped him launch his own line, debuting in 2016. As a designer showing at Paris Fashion Week, he’s still relatively new. The brand only debuted its first formal show for fall/winter 2018. (Previously, collection viewing was by private appointment only).
At the heart of the label is an appreciation and exploration of the color black, and furthermore, an endearing and unconventional approach to craftsmanship. A Noir Kei Ninomiya piece avoids the usual sewing and instead is constructed through various and odd networks of wires, or linked laser-cut materials and sophisticiated networks of modules.
According to the show notes for Noir Kei Ninomiya’s fall 2020 show, “This season, Ninomiya explored gradations of the color red, which when combined, result in black.” Typical to form, the garments were larger than life and verged on wearable sculptures, with a punkish undertone. Shrouded in safety pin covered dresses, layers of tulle, expressive wire forms, massive chunky knits and cage-like structures of bow-embellished PVC, each models transformed into something alien, from another world.
A closer look also revealed the brand’s first collaboration: shoes with Church’s, all done up with signature black and metal metal embellishments on their exteriors.
Backstage at Noir Kei Ninomiya’s Fall 2020 show, the hair was the result of a collaboration with two artists: Hair artist Shoplifter created the wild braided hairpieces, while famous floral artist Azuma Makoto added live flowers, plants, and branches.
“I was asked to do something really crazy, and when I looked at his clothes, I knew it had to be something big, bold, and sculptural,” Shoplifter said backstage. When Shoplifter saw the clothing, a lot of sporadic, creative changes were made. And Makoto was adding live plants and flowers to the various hairpieces up until the last minutes of the show, each one of them alive and fragile.
Makeup artist Go Miyuki painted bold steaks of raw-looking black body paint across the sides of models’ faces. “It’s all inspired by the clothing and the hair. It’s very simple and strong. It’s not too much, but it’s quite strong,” he explained. He used paintbrushes to paint on the black look, which added extra texture.
Here, a look at some of the raw, in-progress beauty looks behind the scenes of the show:
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