Meet Noir Kay Ninomiya, the experimental king of dark fashion

Designer Kay Ninomiya doesn’t like black. Instead, he worships an idol and is completely devoted to it. The universal color represents a unique visual identity that goes far beyond color and instead, challenges the notion of wearability. “Black is a beautiful color,” says the designer, speaking quietly with his signature jet black mohawk, at the Comme des Garçons headquarters on Paris’s Place Vendôme, the day after his spring 2023 collection debuted at the city’s fashion week. “The meaning does not change. It’s always the same.”

It’s been more than two years since Noir Kay Ninomiya showed at Paris Fashion Week due to the pandemic — but his shocking and surprising Spring 2023 collection was worth the wait. The jet-black, 3-D, tubular houndstooth dress, which debuted at the tiny Oratory du Louvre, has four cylinders connected to the bottom of the dress, making the wearer look more like a mythical creature than a model. Coupled with a top hat and heavy metal chained hunter boots, it was a total mad hatter. It’s all amazing, and definitely the most extreme single outfit presented at Paris Fashion Week yet. (It took a week to make, Ninomiya told me proudly. Like Rei Kawakubo, the founder and designer of Comme des Garçons who worked for years before launching his own label under the Comme des Garçons umbrella in 2018, Ninomiya doesn’t work with mood boards or themes. “What she expects from her designers is very, very high.” It is,” he says. “So you have to do your best to create what she expects.” He rejects any idea of ​​marketing and only started showing at Paris Fashion Week in 2018. He has quickly become one of the most fascinating designers to watch, not just for Comme des Garçons fans, but for those who worship at the altar of extremes. Fashion.

Noir Kei Ninomiya’s work is big in nature, for the most part. Charcoal storm ties and mountains meet onyx tulle sheath dresses—even a fur coat takes up more than its fair share of space, and that’s on purpose. “It’s easier to express feelings in big chunks,” he said. “It’s more impactful. It’s not really taking up space, but for an idea to come to life, it’s easy. In the end, my work is always very big.”

The rest of the Spring 2023 collection was just as dreamy and shimmering, each piece more surprising than the last: fiery dresses made of black and white fabric tubes, colorful roses suspended in motion above corseted heads, fastened with glittering straps. Balls of tulle, and leather cut dresses were worn with thin, tangled wires and glittering silver pearls that moved slightly as he walked – all in black. “I wanted to express this strength in things that we find strange or strange or wonderful,” he said. “This kind of joy is what I want to translate and convey into fashion.”

But even fashion’s black king couldn’t resist a little celebration as he returned to Paris Fashion Week, adding ocean blues and soft whites to his collection. For the past few seasons, Ninomiya has been using a single color to emphasize the depth of black: “It’s fun to use colors to make black stand out more,” he says. This time he chose blue flowers hanging from silver chains, a crinoline and glittering puffs. “It’s like wrapping, for a gift. I wanted to make it like candy, and the pearls remind me of the things you could play with as a child.”

It’s not uncommon for Ninomiya to blur the lines as a traditional textile (last season, it used fake nails). Closing out the collection were the final two looks done in white that seemed to magically float down the runway. One could mistake the material for a feather or even fur, but it was actually fake fur. His design approach is indescribable in his own words: “I really don’t think about anything; But the main idea behind my work is to create something big and round with expression on the clothes.

This kind of thinking led him to his ultimate technique: not using traditional tailoring in most of his garments. “At the beginning of his brand, I thought you have to use different techniques to create something different,” he explains. Instead of threading, the pieces are glued together, connected by chains or pins, or attached to separate fascias.

Because of this, many may be quick to declare Ninomiya’s work as art rather than fashion, but the designer is adamant that the two disciplines belong in their own category. “I don’t think about it,” he said. “They are two different things to me. I create things for you to wear. The idea of ​​being art is not intentional.

Most important to the Noir Kei Ninomiya universe, however, is novelty. “I always say I’m doing something new, but the black one is always the same,” he says with a laugh. “It may not be visible in person, but people who have never seen my work will probably learn something they never knew before.”