A provocateur of deconstruction, the show notes for NOKI’s SS23 collection, staged in a small grotto just off of Covent Garden’s Seven Dials, were not actually show notes at all. Instead, attendees are given a list of each of the collection’s 41 looks, named and listed like an impenetrable hymn sheet.

“PIMP REAPER” and “FACEBOOK STARTS WARS” give only a glimpse into the mind of this chaotic creator, but that’s okay. NOKI’s clothes speak for themselves anyway, often plastered with bootlegged logos and repurposed brand insignia that tell new stories with their scratchy, editing pen marks. Models carried with them their phones and finger-hanging mini-speakers, the experience somewhat akin to walking down the promenade of Brighton Beach, where NOKI’s studio is based, catching glimpses into the lives of passers-by.

Sporty shorts were fashioned into waistband crop tops through reverse reveals, eliciting shocked whoops and ahhs from each corner of the room, while the NOKI bride skipped gaily out of a set of double doors into the surrounding courtyard, no doubt posing their arse off underneath a no face, no case balaclava. Then, the show’s middle was interrupted by the designer himself tailing a backpack-clad model, tearing cut and spliced t-shirts from their compartments and flinging them onto metal beams or at the feet of clapping audience members. Cartoon characters also faced mutilation on barely-there tie-dye beach dresses and ripped gowns, paired with drooping knitwear, singed and gutted to shreds. Apocalyptic in theory, what NOKI serves is optimism from the ruins of the world’s end, a promise that beauty can always be patchworked from the discarded.