by Giorgia Cantarini
Kei Ninomiya transformed punk from a nostalgic uniform into an open, agender language for a new generation for its Spring Summer 2027 menswear show
Noir Kei Ninomiya presented its menswear Spring Summer 2027 collection at Pitti Uomo 110, not attempting to recreate punk as it once was. Instead, he asked what punk might mean now — after decades of appropriation, commercialisation and endless visual repetition.
Presented under DSM Kei Ninomiya, the label developed for Dover Street Market, the Spring/Summer 2027 collection was titled “Our Punk.” Staged inside the former Sant’Orsola convent in Florence, the show placed subcultural disorder against a setting charged with history and architectural severity.
The collection opened with familiar codes: tartan, leather, metal hardware, safety pins, chains and dramatically spiked hair. Yet Ninomiya refused to treat them as sacred symbols belonging exclusively to the past. Tailoring was disrupted by skirts, oversized trousers and asymmetric constructions, proposing a wardrobe that felt deliberately agender, ageless and open-ended.
This is also where DSM Kei Ninomiya separates itself from the designer’s better-known noir kei ninomiya line. While noir is recognised for its complex, sculptural constructions and near-architectural approach to the body, DSM works in a more immediate register. The clothes remain considered, but they are easier to enter, wear and interpret. It is less about producing an untouchable fashion object and more about creating the foundations of a shared wardrobe.
The strongest pieces combined sharp leather outerwear with kilts, distressed graphics and generous, deconstructed silhouettes. Schott NYC’s Perfecto motorcycle jacket was reworked through Ninomiya’s structural language, while collaborations with George Cox, OTW by Vans and vintage specialist Pretty Relics expanded the collection beyond the runway. Archival imagery and cut-and-paste graphics by Sex Pistols art director Jamie Reid, alongside contributions connected to the Judy Blame Charitable Trust, embedded the project within punk’s creative lineage without allowing history to dominate it.
But the collection’s most memorable gesture was also its least aggressive. Monumental mohawks were decorated with small, brightly coloured flowers, disrupting the severity of the looks with humour and unexpected tenderness. The contrast prevented “Our Punk” from becoming another predictable parade of black leather and rebellion-by-numbers. It introduced vulnerability into a language usually built around confrontation.
There is, inevitably, a contradiction in presenting punk through an international fashion institution and a globally influential retailer. But Ninomiya does not pretend to resolve it. His version of punk is not presented as pure, historically authentic or untouched by commerce. Its central idea — participation matters more than perfection — suggests that subculture can survive only when it is allowed to mutate, circulate and belong to people who were not there the first time.
At a moment when fashion continues to mine the past in search of cultural relevance, DSM Kei Ninomiya offered something more convincing than nostalgia. “Our Punk” treated rebellion not as a finished aesthetic, but as a method: alter the uniform, reject fixed identities and make space for new communities to enter. The result was not punk preserved behind glass. It was an eye-catching punk-remix.
