Noir Kei Ninomiya Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear ....Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

As illustrated by Kei Ninomiya’s final look, this designer deserves a bigger show space and, ideally, a more amenable time slot. The piece was a tutu with a matching helmet built on a base of PVC and hemmed with metal....
On top, this designer built the latest variation of his fabulously fastidious no-sew construction technique, attaching reefs of ruffled gauze. It was a super show closer, yet the impact of its entrance was stalled somewhat when the model was forced to tilt her metal-hem just so and shuffle sideways to fit through the narrow doorway from the backstage corner of this top-floor showroom.

Before it started, my bench-mate got involved in a game of Noir bingo: ornate bikers, bikers with transparency, sculptural dresses assembled via strips on mesh harnesses—all our predictions were hit, clean and true. Add to that some hand-sewn synthetic knitwear that emerged straight from the eyeleted sections of the semi-transparent mesh they were sectioned against, ruffle-snap aprons, and a few pieces in black floral jacquard that preempted 3-D florals on a biker made of horizontal pleather strips and harnesses, and dresses in symmetrical rose-like whorls of more fabric. The designer said afterward that he sees the white in his collection more as space than a color—look at the opening dress of black-piped, pressed strips to see what he means. Which leads back to the start: Ninomiya’s space explorations deserve both more, ahem, space in which to perform and a larger audience to perform to.