Noir Kei Ninomiya, SS16, Paris.

For many designers, the basic construction elements of a garment are quite simple – you take 2D pieces of fabric and join them together, usually by sewing seams, to create a 3D object. In the collections created by Kei Ninomiya however, it seems that even these basic ideas aren’t taken for granted so that the flat 2D fabric pieces are often split and ruptured and the methods used to join fabric pieces together become as much an act of embellishment as one of construction.

The Spring-Summer 2016 collection at Noir Kei Ninomiya continued to explore the same types of black on black fabric manipulations from the Autumn-Winter 2015 collection. Although the pieces are very sculptural, they are always somehow sympathetic enough to the body to prevent them from appearing as just stiff wearable artworks. This is in large part due to the way the flatness of the fabric is broken by the manipulations, and also due to the diversity of fabric choices. Sheer black ruffles add soft volume to some silhouettes while flat black fabric is often spliced and twisted like blinds that have gone awry to reveal the interior of a room. The use of what appears to be clear plastic vinyl helps to break up the dark colour palette, but also provides an opportunity to highlight the use of a twisted trim that is used to seam together parts of the garment.

Part of what is interesting is not just the creation of the modular patterns, but where the patterns seem to “fail” and the fabric falls away. Often this happens by changing the scale so that shaped pieces become larger down the body, or where beading is staggered between split pieces of fabric to create unevenly spaced holes. It is also particularly effective on the sheer knotted macramé dress where a whole side of the dress looks as though it has become unravelled.

Images from Vogue.com»