This is very cool idea but the execution leaves to be desired:  Create new brand (Noir Noir); take the concept of an old Steve McQueen flight jacket (you know the one with the orange inlay reverse which easily wears wherever you go as if it is your high school jacket); take traditional French pattern in the form of classical imagery from old painting and tapestries; mix the collection into beautiful traditional Parisian couture showroom among well established and classical brands; price brand into the upmarket; – and hope for the best.

There are some things very right and very wrong with this approach.

One, at an upmarket price where your newly born T-shirt rivals a high-end Gucci or Fendi T – shirt (that’s okay because the Noir Noir shirts are really beautiful), your FINISHING (haute finition) needs to be picture perfect – or as the French say ‘impeccable’. But it was not, and the finishing on the items leaves to be desired. So fix that stitching first we would say, and let’s call this oversight a birth defect which can still be corrected.

Two, the idea to use old medieval tapestries (the Lady with the Unicorn) and rococo painting (Fragonard and Watteau type of imagery but we’re not quite sure) as a backdrop on a flight jacket or on a cool lounge or club Tee is interesting, because it’s exciting to see the traditional and classical design making a grand comeback on the club and the party scene (these items are cool for real fancy chancy Kanye West wannabes who are looking for the latest greatest in order to impress the hoi polloi with something super-original which no one else has ever seen or heard of – like privately printed Mylon sunglasses or so).

Three, why exactly does everyone need their own new clothing line or brand new brand these days?  Victoria Beckham vêtements, Kim Kardashian perfume,  the Jay-Z clothing line.

The global hype starts to resemble something like having your own Maserati, your own Aston Martin, your own trophy wife, a trophy celebrity boyfriend (yes that is you Lewis Hamilton) – and this has sadly nothing to do with style or fashion per se any more, but everything with just claiming your own trophy brand – it’s owning a brand name in order to increase your own (brand).

So granted that we loved the Noir Noir collection (providing the stitching was better), here is the moral of the story: If you have a great idea (rococo and medieval patterns on a modern day flight jacket for men’s outer -, club, and lounge wear) do the execution of it all with as much style, precision and panache as that Watteau and Fragonard used to paint:  With a sense of brutal perfection!  For if you don’t, something will inevitably get lost in the translation – even when you hang your new collection amidst the class of a traditional Parisian showroom for haute couture.

Posted by Sandro Joo and photos by Franz Kennedy.