The Latest Star in the Comme des Garçons Constellation

by None

If there’s one mandate at the Japanese juggernaut of Comme des Garçons, it’s to pursue the new — relentlessly, methodically, unflinchingly. It’s a notion Kei Ninomiya is well acquainted with. The latest Rei Kawakubo protege to see the light of the runway is doing just that for his Noir Kei Ninomiya line. He does not seek to be influenced or even inspired; he simply seeks to create something never-before-created.

The all-black collection of biker jackets and complicated dresses he showed for fall 2015 may not seem particularly new, but when molded, sculpted, macraméd, heat-stamped, and laser-cut in a certain way, an auteur-like way, with zippers and studs just so, it becomes a radical revelation. A (faux) leather coat made out of padded shapes connected with a thousand or so beads, with nary a thread or vulgar seam in sight, is practically a manifesto for considered dressing.

Like his philosophy, Ninomiya’s entry into fashion has been rather unique. He graduated from college in Tokyo with a degree in French Lit before joining the fashion course of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but he dropped out after one year to join Comme des Garçons back in Tokyo as a pattern-cutter. When one is offered a job after personally interviewing with Rei Kawakubo, one does not look back. Four years later, in 2012, he was handed the holy grail, an offer to develop and show his own collection under the Comme umbrella. With the mindful madness of a sculptor, a yen for Japanese-style experimentalism, a penchant for French literature, and of course his insatiable quest for the new, could he have ended up anywhere else?

Noir Kei Ninomiya