Shanghai Designers Look Ahead as China Recovers
SHANGHAI — The full physical return of Shanghai Fashion Week this season made a lot forget that exactly a year ago the city entered a two-month-long lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.
The general sentiment among the fashion community is that while that was a traumatizing and business-threatening experience, the majority are ready to move on and focus on what happens next.
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“We saw many international buyers and media coming to Shanghai Fashion Week, as their first trip to Shanghai in several years, they can physically experience the revival of the city’s vitality,” said Lv Xiaolei, secretary-general of the Shanghai Fashion Week Organizing Committee.
“After years of development, local young designers have become more mature in their exploration of business models and have gradually found a clear road ahead regarding design and brand positioning. Everyone is ready for a more diversified means of communication and exchange at home and abroad,” Lv added.
That energy could be felt on the runway too. Local talents presented upbeat and forward-thinking collections that cater to the return of office life and international travel.
Shushu/Tong, for example, presented a sultry but office attire-appropriate fall 2023 collection in a labyrinth set with Labelhood, the brand’s retail partner. Founded by London College of Fashion graduates Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang, the brand has garnered a loyal global following since 2015 for its sweet yet seductive aesthetic.
The new collection based most of the silhouettes on school uniforms. While looking cute and nerdy on the surface, it had a subversive, sexual undercurrent. It seems the brand is moving into a new phase as the Shushu/Tong girls are growing up and entering womanhood. There were a lot more daywear options as well, on top of its signature sequined and embellished cocktail styles.
“This season, we actually want to create a more suppressive atmosphere that’s back on Backroom, a term on 4chan. It is the kind of space that looks very normal but a bit odd, so we turned the show space into a blue maze to manifest that energy,” Liu said post-show.
The upbeat energy at the off-schedule show of Ming Ma, a Central Saint Martins alum, was even more obvious. The now Shanghai-based designer described the fall 2023 collection as “a joyful and colorful feast inspired by Helen Frankenthaler’s and Mark Rothko’s works.”
With bright color blocks and abstract brush strokes translated into couture shape-inspired pieces, the collection offered a playful yet sophisticated wardrobe for those with a busy social season.
“I want to celebrate women’s vigor and adoration for life, conveying the romance and empowerment of femininity with diversity through menswear tailoring. I then added beading details, handcrafted bows and floral embroidery for a touch of elegance, bringing the hybrid aesthetic of Eastern and Western cultures,” Ma added.
Shie Lyu, who has made a name for herself in Shanghai for her zero-waste approach to design, closed Shanghai Fashion Week last Friday, with a star-studded show, supported by Genesis, Hyundai’s upmarket car brand.
“I do feel the lively and energetic vibe this season, as there are many industry people as well as popular talents and artists at our show, which is totally different from last year.” said Lyu, who presented a collection that caters to those who “do not live under the gaze of others.”
She used her signature three-dimensional upcycled fabric to construct futuristic evening pieces and offered daywear options made with traditional suiting fabrics inspired by her upcoming collaboration with Stella McCartney, organized by American Vogue.
Lyu will rework a look from the British brand’s spring 2023 collection and reinterpret it with her own design language. It’s understood that McCartney will in return do the same thing with a look from Lyu’s collection, and present her take on the brand in the near future.
Following her Milan Fashion Week showcase, Shuting Qiu restaged her show in Shanghai, filled with patchwork faux fur and clashing prints. Additional looks with AI-generated prints turned up the volume on her symphony of florals, resulting in a bodysuit that came straight out of the metaverse.
“Designing with AI technology actually felt magical,” Qiu said after the show. In addition to her signature florals, Qiu updated the collection with zany smiley face motifs that also dotted the models’ eyelids.
“We spent a lot of time tweaking our Milan show, including adding small wigs that resemble flowers on the models’ hair and creating polka-dotted eye makeup,” Qiu said. The show ended with Teresa Teng’s “Tsugunai” playing in the background, leaving the crowd in nostalgic splendor.
Staffonly, a contemporary menswear label that has collaborated with the likes of Juicy Couture and Onitsuka Tiger, created a sci-fi-inspired stage with a trampoline at the center of the runway.
Models took turns bouncing, as in a trance. At the same time, their peers, or Staffonly astronauts, orbited the arena in clothes borrowed from an otherworldly tribe in coordinated shades of yellow, green and brown.
The collection highlighted architectural jacquard knitting that lightly looped around the models’ torso and calves. Crochet polo and pullovers that featured low-resolution images of planetary trajectories brought nostalgia into play, as the designer paid tribute to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft that took off in 1981.
Skilled at combining myth-making with technical garments, the collection also showcased all-black outerwear with illuminated cuffs and hoodie rims.
“This collection is an ode to all the explorers who fought against the usual constraints of gravity for the sake of their distant and vague dreams,” said Shimo Zhou, designer of Staffonly.
“They kept on bouncing and bouncing to reach the sky, and even though gravity pulled them back instantly, they never gave up. This group of jumpy young people can create miracles because they never stop trying to reach for the stars,” Zhou added.
Comme Moi, a womenswear brand founded by one of China’s first supermodels, Lv Yan, showcased a collection full of pragmatic clothes with feminine appeal for the working woman.
Relaxed suits brushed over by expressional ink or drenched in lively green and lemon and vacation-ready numbers dripped in gold or dazzling in tassels presented a softer version of the Comme Moi woman.
“Since fashion is conceived in advance, this season’s creations were made during last year’s most difficult period. We used a lot of black and white, reflecting our state of mind at the time, but bright colors are infused throughout, as a hope for recovery and renewal, even at the darkest times,” Lv said.
“Everyone was under a lot of pressure for the past few years, so we created more grandiose gestures to lift people out of their doldrums. Now that hope is in here, we’ve dialed it back and went back to our original template to present easy-to-wear garments. I want people to pay attention and listen to their inner child during rapid change and development.”
The womenswear label, owned by local manufacturing giant Chenfeng Group, is slated to open six to eight stores this year and test the waters in the European market. “I will be spending half of my time in Europe in the near future. Expanding into Europe is our next goal,” Lv added.
Fashion designer Feng Chen Wang, who is now showing on the Paris men’s calendar, is also looking ahead and exploring new opportunities beyond fashion.
She debuted her collaboration with Estée Lauder, which includes a foundation, an eye shadow set, and three colors of lipstick, during her fall 2023 collection preview at Shanghai Fashion Week.
“This collaboration further demonstrates my philosophy and vision on gender fluidity. It breaks the boundaries of traditional female makeup. At my Paris runway show, all models’ makeup looks were created with this collection,” Wang said.
The designer added that she is excited to return to the local fashion community in Shanghai, and that “the city is definitely ready to play a more important role on the global fashion stage.”
Jewelers including Cindy Chao and Lama Hourani hosted previews for the visitors in town. Chao hosted exclusive appointments in her residence on the Bund to present both her more accessible white-label collection creations and a few rare black-label pieces.
Hourani, in the meantime, opened her art-filled studio in downtown Shanghai for international visitors who returned for the first time since the pandemic.
“This fashion week was exceptionally special; it was a celebration on so many levels. The opening of the city and the arrival of many fashion professionals and the return of the energy in the city – it reminded me of how fast and addictive energy is. This is my Shanghai the place I chose to make a home,” said the Shanghai-based Jordanian designer, who moved to the city for the second time with her family three years ago, as her husband was tasked with leading a major Parisian luxury house’s China operation.
At the moment, Hourani is working on a collection titled “name not finalized,” which is inspired by “wavelengths produced by two people as they connect and feel aligned,” as well as a collection called the Rubble that will benefit victims of the recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkey.
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