Shang Chia's Spring 2022 Collection is Ready to Wear

Today was Shang Xia’s Paris Fashion Week launch. Rare is the debut in which top models Mica Argañaraz and Kiki Willems walk the runway, but Shang Xia is not your average newcomer. The company emerged 10 years ago as a joint partnership between Hermès and the Chinese designer Qiong Er Jiang. Recently Italy’s Exor (the holding company behind this summer’s Ferrari ready-to-wear launch and, of course, Ferrari) came on as a majority shareholder. Hermès’s Pierre-Alexis Dumas and Exor’s John Elkann sat in the front row at the show in the round, a cheering circle for designer Yang Li. He’s no newcomer either. Born in Beijing and raised in Australia, Li founded his independent label 10 years ago. Those who watch the runways closely will be familiar with his grunge-goth sensibility.

Backstory established, on to the clothes. This was neither grunge nor goth but rather clean and minimal, rooted in tailoring in vivid highlighter colors but softened with elegant black sheath dresses that suggested Li is equally comfortable with draping on the body. He spelled out his approach backstage. “My mission and the brand’s mission is to champion Chinese creativity,” he started, “and to say that China is not just a market. Chinese people can create fashion and luxury on a world stage at the top level. That’s a beautiful challenge. It’s been my dream since being in the fashion business.”

The show began with an unlined white leather coat whose back was quilted like a puffer, worn with flat-front ’90s slim pants with a contrast-color waistband. The accessories were just this side of sci-fi: a white leather clutch in the shape of a right triangle painted to a car-finish gleam and house slippers encased in see-through plastic bubbles. “Very difficult to make,” Li said. The point, he explained, “is to take traditional pillars and really imagine a luxury brand from the future today. Taking the craft that Hermès is known for but doing it from 2050 today for a younger audience. Because I want to talk about Chinese style today and tomorrow.”

One obvious example of the craftsmanship Li was touting was a double-breasted coat with openwork leather sleeves, in what looked like crochet or macramé. But more often than not, the clothes had a streamlined cool: the masc suits in ultra-brights, the crisp shirting, the second-skin knit layering pieces, the coats and dresses sliced at the shoulders so the wearer can go sleeve free. Li belongs to the school of Helmut Lang and Raf Simons. In a season when serious but not boring tailoring has mostly gone by the wayside, Shang Xia and Li offer a promising alternative with a new kind of selling point. “It’s like imagining an empty chair at a round table of luxury fashion brands that should be for a Chinese representative. What a great mission to embark on,” Li said. “We’re going to give it our best go.”