Is it natural or unnatural? That’s all the time the query at Noir Kei Ninomiya, whose sculptural, fantastical items recommend a extra complicated human relationship with nature than a pastoral idyl.
For all their magic, there’s typically a sense that the human is being consumed or colonised by the alien garments. Who has the higher hand within the Noir dynamic? It swings from piece to piece.
That stress may very well be seen in a sequence of items which melded neat test tailoring with coats and shrugs comprised of loops of plastic industrial tubing. Once more the commercial merged with nature, when organza flowers danced across the physique on articulated arms connected to a harness, which was worn over a tailor-made shorts go well with.
Some issues regarded recognisably like garments. There have been tinsel lampshade skirts, white shirts, tailor-made Bermudas and tiered, crinolined maxi coats. A collaboration with Hunter wellies (each rain boot wants its personal S&M model harness) also needs to go down a storm with Noir-heads.
Others items operated on the extent of wearable, sculptural fantasies. If you happen to’ve ever questioned what it will appear to be to put on the storm clouds on a climate map as a shrug, Noir had the reply (and the clouds had a silver lining).
Essentially the most stunning items got here on the finish, with the fashions, sporting seems to be that sprouted delicate white fronds or clear tentacles. They appeared to merge with bioluminescent sea creatures discovered within the deep ocean and we’re so wonderous, they nearly deserved a breathy David Attenborough voiceover. The impact was mesmerising. The extent of fantasy is so exalted at Noir that it’s inconceivable to not be awed by it.
,