Last week millions of students all over the world joined another "Fridays for Future" Global Climate Strike. One child, 12-year-old Potito Ruggiero, from Stornarella, Foggia, made the news in Italy for cycling down to the square of his town and striking by himself against climate change. Potito, standing with his homemade banner showing a mille feuille cake made with plastic layers rather than pastry and cream, explained to the local mayor that the Earth is our Mother and we shouldn't be polluting her since it is unthinkable that children may poison their own mother.
One day after the Global Climate Strike, Japanese designer Kei Ninomiya, tried to reinvent a wardrobe for a Mother Earth-like figure during Paris Fashion Week.
For his S/S 20 collection, Kei Ninomiya, Rei Kawakubo's protégé, combined ecology with a lesson he learnt while working as a pattern cutter at Comme des Garçons – always create something new.
The lesson became his motto and basic principle when he started creating his own collections under the Noir Kei Ninomiya moniker, so for this new collection he decided to go back to the beginning of his story and come up with something innovative and previously unseen, refocusing on assembling garments without sewing, another principle behind his brand.
The runway opened with white, despite the designer stated in the past he would have just worked with the black shade (hence the name of the label; mind you, white constructions also appeared in the brand's S/S 18 collection) with a dress in which pearls seemed suspended from metal threads, creating a sort of mist around the model's body. The effect was reminiscent of the early morning dew on grass.
Then models, all of them with headdresses inspired by the natural world styled by Japanese floral artist Azuma Makoto with real ferns, palms and fronds, walked down the runway in monumental white fluffy tulle gowns that called to mind cumulonimbus clouds. In some cases they looked pure white and when seeing them art lovers maybe thought about the "Nimbus" series of images by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde, with those ephemeral clouds mysteriously hovering in indoor spaces.
As the catway progressed the cloud structures seemed to be going gray and got stained with black, or assumed new geometrical configurations, they turned into orgami-like spikes to maybe to mimick ice crystals.
White gave way to black, Kei Ninomiya favourite shade, for coats and tiered dresses covered in strips of pleather, cages of buckles, ribbons, bows and ruffles, while green-black floral rosettes bloomed on the garments like poisonous flowers.
Rebirth was signalled by more monumental gowns in green tulle imitating the consistency of moss or made with long green strips of tulle with heat-bonded black tips that replicated the effects you may find in feathers (imagine the Burryman being transported to a tropical jungle and meeting the Swamp Thing and you get the idea...).
Clusters of black plastic foliage and palm fronds reminiscent of Philip Beesley's responsive architectures signalled the end of the show that closed with transparent and ethereal acrylic snowflake chainmail chandelier-like dresses.
By following the rhythm of the runway from white to black, green and white again, you realised this was a story of life, destruction, death and rebirth (a cycle that in fashion happens every few months...).
Now, while most of these pieces were not commercial as they could be considered as arty studies about repetition, innovative constructions and unusual and experimental geometries, there were actually coats derived from biker jackets with a rib cage-like configuration that surrounded the shoulders, deconstructed jackets that formed apron dresses and elegant skirts with a touch of punk style that will certainly migrate from runway to shop.
There is one point to make here, though: despite its connection with nature, rebirth and Mother Earth, the collection wasn't certainly sustainable as it combined natural forms with synthetic fabrics and materials.
Yet this dichotomy between natural and synthetic perfectly represents our world, suspended between chemically produced materials and a desire to go natural and green.
Who knows, maybe in future Kei Ninomiya will provide us with a vision for a sustainable fashion industry. For the time being, he seems to be more about futuristic constructions characterised by abstract geometries, sculptural bulbous cocoons made with alternative techniques such as linking, riveting, weaving and folding, and architectural structures based on the concepts of modularity and repetition. And while Mother Earth may have found a supporter but not a sustainable saviour in Kei Ninomiya, Rei Kawakubo has probably spotted in him someone else - a clever and talented heir to her house.
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