Shanghai Fashion Week

Shanghai is steadily becoming the new player (replacing Copenhagen) joining the Paris, Milan, London and New York constellation of fashion weeks. One brand that caught my eye and I sincerely loved this season is Samuel Guì Yang. Lead by Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén, the “East Wind” collection was as powerful and transforming as the symbolical title suggests. Airy crepe shirts and silk-linen trousers were layered on top of each other or worn under tailoring and bomber jackets, all riffing off traditional Chinese styles. A burgundy maxidress recalled the cheongsam, only it was knit in a loose gauge yarn that revealed the shape of a soaring swallow when stretched against the body. Then, Yang and Litzén made a pair of exquisite crumpled silk sheaths they hand-dyed and hemmed with tiny beads. You could see the DIY workmanship in the sometimes uneven dye, which added a charming patina to the collection. “This is how we dress, it’s how all people dress, really,” said Litzén of their incorporation of more artisanal and sometimes ancient elements, “combining something older with something new.” As they say, you need to understand the past to create the future. The one this duo is shaping looks very bright.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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After a week-long blog pause caused by a major computer crash, I’m back! I planned to write about Susan Fang‘s enchanting spring-summer 2022 collection a week ago, but then my Mac’s hard drive went dead… luckily, it all ended well. Fang is a highly emotional designer in tune with the tenor of our times. Shown on a lightly misting runway in Shanghai back in October, the collection took texture to extreme and radical new places: she’s created a new material technique of folding tulle she calls “air flower” inspired by broken flowers and sliced fruits that repeats across the body in open-weave, netlike dresses, tightly latticed minis, and explosive, ombré poufs. The pieces are instantly appealing in both a visual way and in a sensory one, thoughtful to the bodies inside them and the observers taking them in. The exuberance and joy in each of Fang’s pieces belies an underpinning of sadness, though; like the best Dutch still life or memento mori, her frilly garments mark a passing of time or encapsulate the multiplicity of time itself. She quotes Einstein’s Dreams, a 2004 novel by Alan Lightman about the creation of the theory of relativity: “Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.” Her work is almost precise, marked by engineering and repetition, but it’s never without a thoughtful touch. When she speaks about regenesis, self-love, and progress, you get the sense she operates in that special place between science and art. Place Susan Fang on your fashion radar!