Shanghai Fashion Week returns to in-person shows: Here’s what happened
As Shanghai Fashion Week draws to a close, we look back at some highlights from China’s biggest fashion event.
The stylish marathon that is Fashion Month is drawing to a close. The past few weeks have seen celebrities dotting front rows of runway shows in New York, influencers taking over the streets in Paris, and fashion editors churning out content and predicting style trends from Milan.
And if you blinked, you might have missed the past nine days, which constituted Shanghai Fashion Week (SHFW) for the spring 2023 season. Running from September 22 until today, the latest edition of SHFW, a biannual event that is China’s biggest fashion fair, was a particularly exciting time for the industry, as it returned to a physical format after the previous season suffered from postponements and eventually went entirely virtual in June due to unending COVID-19 lockdowns.
With strict COVID-19 protocols still in place for attendees, the weeklong event featured runway presentations by more than 60 designers, which were held at multiple locations across Shanghai, including the lifestyle landmark Xintiandi. The packed calendar also included industry panels and trade fairs, with digital campaigns sprinkled throughout the week to increase engagement from the general public.
To cut through the noise of the nine days of nonstop action, here are some highlights from the past week:
SHFW first-timers make runway debuts
There were several notable designers showing for the first time on the SHFW runway.
Mǎ Kǎi 马凯, the Tianjin-born designer behind M ESSENTIAL — which was selected by Opening Ceremony in a 2015 campaign highlighting up-and-coming designers from China — staged the first showcase for M ESSENTIAL NOIR, a sister, youth-facing brand of his main label. The collection was inspired by iconic objects and shows from Ma’s childhood, such as Japanese animation Sailor Moon and kaleidoscopes. Motifs were reimagined in Ma’s designs, which showed off the crafty elements associated with his more established label but through a feminine and more youthful lens.
ANNENONO, a brand created by designer duo Chén Rúqún 陈如群 and Wáng ānní 王安霓 in Milan in 2016, made its debut at SHFW with designs that were heavily influenced by ’90s fashion, while Yibin Chen, who studied architecture in London before discovering passion in fashion, played into her strength and used 3D printing to create mind-bending textiles for her namesake brand.
Breakout Designers Shine
After having a breakout year in 2021, Shu/Shu Tong, a Shanghai-based label founded in 2015 by longtime friends Léi Liúshù 雷留树 and Jiǎng Yǔtóng 蒋雨彤, was arguably one of the most anticipated shows of the week. Recognized for its theatrical silhouettes, rebellious romanticism, and cutesy-with-an-edge style, the brand has blown up in and outside China, quickly rising to an industry-respected status in a short amount of time. With a cult following among Gen Z fashionistas, Shu/Shu Tong has been stocked at prestigious shopping destinations around the world, as well as online luxury fashion retailers like Farfetch and SSENSE.
For their Spring/Summer 2023 collection titled Pretty Woman, the designer duo expanded on the brand’s signature “adult babies” aesthetic and injected a tinge of sex appeal to many garments shown on the runway. Compared to last season’s offering, which was grounded in a neutral color palette of black and white, Shu/Shu Tong’s spring 2023 collection is rife with colors and floral prints, with bow ties and ruffles still being the defining thread pulled through the collection’s entire narrative. According to the show notes, the latest collection is a character study of a slightly grown-up version of a typical Shu/Shu Tong girl, who is unabashedly feminine, flirtatious, and self-assertive.
Meanwhile, other veteran designers and familiar faces have returned to SHFW, such as Huá Juān 华娟, founder of JUDYHUA, and Yè Qiān 叶谦, designer behind YES BY YESIR.
Female empowerment is a central theme
As the official ambassador of SHFW, Xiǎo Xuě 晓雪, former editor-in-chief of Elle China, helmed a special event from a perspective of female empowerment and female leadership. Taking place on September 25, the event, titled “Shine Her Light,” featured two roundtable discussions featuring not only female designers in the fashion industry, but also successful women in other fields such as filmmaking and music.
Sustainability is the future
With environmental consciousness growing among consumers, it’s no surprise that SHFW had an expressed focus on sustainability, an important issue for the $3 trillion apparel industry, whose activities account for more than 5% of the world’s carbon emissions.
This topic was discussed in-depth at an industry talk last Friday, when a group of sustainable fashion designers convened to share the latest updates on fabric development, upcycling, and other eco-friendly practices in the industry.
Physical with a touch of digital
Despite a return to primarily in-person events, the digital influence of the past two-plus years appears here to stay. Some of the shows, including the opening runway presentation by Comme Moi, a fashion label created by supermodel-turned-designer Lǚ Yàn 吕燕, were livestreamed in partnership with Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Buzz phrases like metaverse, NFT, and Web 3.0 were on everyone’s lips at a panel discussion on September 24. Themed around futuristic fashion, the talk, organized by SHFW and fashion-industry website WWD, was attended by Zhāng Jùn 章俊, an executive at Dionysos, a NFT marketplace backed by the Shanghai city government, and a selection of fashion designers who have toyed with blockchain-related technologies in the past.
