Maybe the cure for pastiche saturation in fashion is to deliver a reckoning so beautifully haunting that it leaves an unshakable impression on its audience. “That was just… uncanny, but in the best way possible,” says one of the many bewildered attendees as he joins the crowd being ushered out of Salle Wagram after bearing witness to Noir Kei Ninomiya SS27. Kei Ninomiya occupies a unique creative silo within the CDG universe, speaking a darkly romantic language. His label began as an experimental project before becoming an official brand under CDG, and he shares Kawakubo-san’s commitment to the radical and unfamiliar. Each runway show elicits an instinctive reaction from its audience: some feel haunted, while others might feel they have just witnessed an inexplicable beauty that can never be repeated.
Flora & fauna elements have long held a significant place in Kei Ninomiya’s system of signifiers. This brings us back to his Fall 2018 collection, which I consider his first fully realized statement within the CDG universe. It was marked by commanding floral masks from longtime collaborator Makoto Azuma, who also created the headpieces for SS27. In an interview about that collection, he said, “I use the contrasting elements and things to make a new power... I want to make a new atmosphere, a new feeling.”
This language continued through the human-plant hybrids of Fall 2020 and the petrichor humanoids of Spring 2020. Since taciturnity is a quality often shared by Watanabe-san, Kawakubo-san and Ninomiya, lengthy press releases serve no purpose. The work simply speaks for itself. Aptly titled Petal Rebellion, SS27 stages a softer coup d’état, following Fall 2026’s angsty defiance. Disruption is the ultimate signifier in the collection, as thirty-seven strange characters, many in elongated barrister wigs, seem to have walked out of a Hieronymus Bosch triptych. Music composed by Hakushi Hasegawa evokes a psychologically harrowing atmosphere similar to that of Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs.
Our first contact with the collection comes in the form of upturned, pearl-draped pannier exoskeletons worn over Noir’s tailored ensembles in the opening looks. Makoto’s towering headpieces seem to be in dialogue with the architecture of the densely adorned armor found throughout the collection. Like any great reckoning, the build-up gives purpose to the process. In look ten, burgundy calla lilies and green stems wind through black coils above a white tulle skirt. Look twenty-one introduces an angular dress of playing cards over a blouse with puffed sleeves, its exaggerated hips spilling red flowers. The floral vocabulary becomes increasingly enveloping: look thirty-one engulfs a white gown in clouds of gold, lilac and blue mesh, with purple flowers obscuring the face, while look thirty-four extends black floral latticework into wings, yellow and white blooms nestled within its framework. The final look gathers these gestures into an extravagant bouquet. Translucent curls swell into a bell-shaped skirt, red blossoms and trailing stems escape beneath the hem, and dark botanical branches rise like antlers above the face.
Outside of the ornament and theatrics, Kei Ninomiya is a disciplined tailor, offering a variety of exquisitely crafted jackets and suit sets to his loyal customers, each adorned with a twist specific to SS27. Conceptually exceptional, yet commercially viable. A quintessential Noir recipe. When was the last time I saw a runway show, in person or otherwise, that left such a piercing impression? Maybe McQueen’s VOSS, SS2001, when writer Michelle Olley was revealed reclining nude among moths inside a shattered glass box. “Have the lambs stopped screaming?” Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s voice echoes in my head as I watch the final look disappear down the runway. For a moment, the politics of fashion recede into the shadows, leaving only the lingering image of that extravagant bouquet. The reckoning gives way to renewal: a fresh perspective and the possibility of being surprised by fashion again.
