Noir Kei Ninomiya. Fall 2019 RTW – Paris Fashion Week

(Images from Vogue.com and wwd.com the public domain. All rights. Used in promotion of the designer.)

I recently read an article in Forbes which described having a 'Sponsor' is better than a 'Mentor'.  That is a very incorrect assertion.  A mentor is and always will be an invaluable and priceless asset, if we label everything in market terms, they are extremely relevant in learning  from experience and the hardships of life.  A sponsor, say an investor, doesn't care and is only attracted to the material gain.  Which is fair enough, but he/she will not assist you in growth.  In other words, learning  how to survive.  In a push button world of interaction within digital relays, the real is now becoming harder an further away to distinguish.  With prefabrication and layering of expectations that everyone will make it and become superstars and entrepreneurs.  The fallacy of achieving power and fame has never been greater.  A mentor, a good one, will ground you, keep you in check. Tell you; “maybe you'll make it or maybe you won't.”

Better still, is a mentor who is also an insider. Regardless, the effort is not an easy path and it is better to create, than rely on celebrity pretense - which in time, fades into a harsh reflection.  Best not cling to what dissolves, as Adrestia (Nemesis) holds no favors and fate has an unkind indifference. 

Kei Ninomiya is the disciple of Rei Kawakubo of the famous Comme des Garcons, who more or less has been Ninomiya's mentor, guiding him as a pattern maker under Kawakubo's brand after leaving the prestiges Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.  Within four years he then establishes his own signature line Noir Kei Ninomiya.  For his Fall 2019 Ready-to-Wear show, his third collection as a Fall presentation at Paris Fashion Week, has Rei Kawakubo via Comme des Garçons as an evident influence, more so his fellow countryman Junya Watanabe (also a Kawakubo protégé).

The Ninomiya Fall 2019 collection struggles with originality, despite its impressive concepts and pieces – it reflects both Kawakubo and Wanatabe's play on the Avant-garde, to which the Japanese designers in the last thirty years have mastered.  Yet, Ninomiya struggles to define a unique presence, I see Wanatabe's ideas inserted throughout this collection, that being the neon-Tokyo, Blade Runner costume design influences.  Which was actually derived by the French in the early 1970s via the now defunct and infamous comic called Métal hurlant.  The Japanese are experts at reworking Western ideas, be it aesthetics to technology.  They have a rich history of combining, what they view from the West into their own idealism – which began in the 1920s Taishō period.

He is still learning.