Though Shanghai Fashion Week was bookended by two high-octane shows, Mark Gong and Shushu/Tong, this edition was slower than usual. Jose Criales-Unzueta, now on his fourth visit to the city, chalks it up to economic anxiety in China. He still had his favorites. “What makes the shows by these five designers impactful,” he reports, is that “while they are working out what it means to be a budding label with global aspirations in a volatile industry, they all prove that honing a singular, focused point of view is the key to success.” He shares his top five from Shanghai here.
1 Samuel Guì Yang
This was one of two off-schedule presentations this season, but by all standards the show of the week. Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén have found a completely individual vernacular of East-meets-West that’s special to watch unfold.
2 Swaying/Knit
Sasha Huang was pregnant the last time her clothes were on the catwalk, and her comeback reminded the style cognoscenti why she’s one of the top-billed designers here. True to her brand’s name, this was a collection built almost entirely out of knits: terrific sweaters, the most comfortable of dresses, and base layers that melt to the touch.
3 Jacques Wei
Donghui Wei has crafted a design vernacular grounded in a contemporary sense of flamboyance that has made his one of the freshest aesthetics on the Shanghai calendar.
4 Oude Waag
Jingwei Yin makes some of the most unabashedly sensual clothes in Shanghai. His preoccupation with the body is grounded in his fascination with pattern cutting: come for the terrific body-con dresses, stay for the remarkable tailoring.
5 Ao Yes
Austin Wang and Yangson Liu are slowly but surely building one of Shanghai’s most exciting for-export labels. On the heels of a top-selling Zara collaboration for mainland China, they took it upon themselves to expand their often tightly-edited output into a full wardrobe experiment. It was one of the most complete and well-rounded propositions of the week. |
