COPENHAGEN–Following Ecco’s kick-off event, avant-garde label Nom de Plume (and by avant-garde we mean really out there) showed their AW 2011 menswear collection at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. If you thought, like I did, that “Royal Danish Academy of Music” meant fancy setting, and you thought “Nom de Plume,” meant fancy French-inspired designs, you would be wrong.

The show was set in what seemed to be a small performance space/rehearsal room that hadn’t been updated since the 1960s and the show opened with two men dressed as samurai running around the room waving red flags. Which is fitting since the show was titled “Shinobi No Mono” (this apparently means “he who is hidden” in Japanese) and the first section of the show was very literally Japanese-inspired: from kimonos to getas duct-taped to the models feet to geisha-esque red lip smears. The show lost the Japanese thread about halfway through and there were steampunky looks, and several guys in white linen blouses and black bottoms that looked inspired by Jean-Paul Gaultier–not his clothes but the man himself. But most importantly, Nom de Plume introduced us to a tailored strapless onesie for men–albeit with a collared button down attached (it was not at all like this other Scandinavian onesie we love so much). It was rag tag and amazing nonetheless, mostly because of the earnestness of it all.