Chinese Emerging Designers Worth Watching
Beyond Shanghai Fashion Week, these labels are exporting a distinctly post-2015 Chinese design vocabulary — Sankuanz's club-kid menswear, Pronounce's tailoring, Staffonly's deconstruction.
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Sankuanz
China · 2013SANKUANZ was founded in 2013 in Xiamen, China by Chinese designer Shangguan Zhe as a contemporary luxury menswear brand specifically focused on what Shangguan described as 'a deliberately-Chinese conceptual menswear vocabulary anchored to traditional Chinese cultural archives and contemporary Chinese-mainland youth-culture references.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2013 Chinese-anchored contemporary-luxury-menswear brands, with the deliberately-experimental fashion-week-aesthetic positioning anchoring the broader brand cultural position.
- 02PR
Pronounce
China · 2016Pronounce was founded in 2015 in Milan by Yushan Li and Jun Zhou, two Chinese-born designers who met as students at Istituto Marangoni Milan. The brand's premise is the literal pronouncing of Chinese culture for an international audience — taking decorative motifs from Chinese opera, traditional silhouettes from cheongsam and changshan tailoring, and Chinese craft techniques, and re-engineering them within an Italian-tailoring framework.
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Staffonly
China · 2015STAFFONLY was founded in 2015 in Beijing by Chinese designer duo Une Yea and Shimo Zhou as a contemporary luxury menswear brand specifically focused on what the founders described as 'a deliberately-architectural-and-conceptual Chinese contemporary-luxury menswear vocabulary anchored to traditional Chinese-craft and contemporary architectural-tailoring proportions.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2015 Beijing-anchored contemporary-luxury-menswear brands.
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Susan Fang
China · 2017Susan Fang was founded in 2017 in London by Chinese designer Susan Fang after her Central Saint Martins MA graduation. The brand has been one of the defining post-2017 London-anchored Chinese-heritage contemporary-luxury-womenswear brands, with the deliberately-air-and-bead-construction visual culture anchoring the broader brand cultural position.
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Shushu/Tong
China · 2015Shushu/Tong was founded in 2015 in Shanghai by Chinese designer duo Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang, both London College of Fashion graduates who launched the brand specifically focused on what they described as 'a deliberately-feminine contemporary womenswear vocabulary that drew explicitly on the visual culture of 1960s-1970s Shanghai-jazz-club aesthetic and contemporary Chinese-youth-feminine sensibility.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce a contemporary womenswear vocabulary that read as authentically rooted in contemporary Chinese-feminine youth culture rather than as 'oriental-export' product designed for Western consumption.
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Chenpeng
China · 2015Chenpeng was founded in 2015 in London by Chen Peng, a Beijing-born designer who graduated from London's Royal College of Art. The label's defining product was clear from the first collection: extreme oversized down jackets, often three or four times the wearer's frame, that simultaneously serve as architectural sculpture and gender-fluid garment. The 2017 'I Love You' down series went viral in Chinese fashion media and put the designer on the international map.
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Particle Fever
China · 2015Particle Fever was founded in 2015 in Shanghai by Chinese-American designer Pearl Lam Wang (王宁宁), a former Wall Street financier who relocated to Shanghai to launch the brand as a contemporary Chinese-anchored athleisure-and-sportswear brand specifically focused on what Wang described as 'science-and-physics-anchored athleisure design.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce technically-engineered athleisure with deliberate-scientific-conceptual graphic-design references (particle physics motifs, quantum-mechanics typography, mathematical-equation graphics) at the contemporary luxury price tier.
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Uma Wang
China · 2009Uma Wang was founded in 2005 in Shanghai by Chinese designer Uma Wang as a contemporary luxury womenswear brand specifically focused on what Wang described as 'a deliberately-Chinese, deliberately-artisanal contemporary-luxury vocabulary anchored to traditional Chinese textile craft and architectural-Mitteleuropean tailoring proportions.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2005 Chinese-anchored contemporary-luxury-womenswear brands, with the deliberately-cross-cultural Chinese-meets-European-classical visual culture anchoring the broader brand position.
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Feng Chen Wang
China · 2015Feng Chen Wang was founded in 2015 in London by Feng Chen Wang, a Royal College of Art MA graduate from Fujian province, China, after her MA graduation show was acquired in its entirety by Lane Crawford and her debut commercial collection was picked up by Dover Street Market. The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce a menswear vocabulary that drew explicitly on Chinese craft and textile traditions (sashiko-adjacent quilting, fish-scale embroidery, traditional dyeing techniques) while building on the deconstruction and reconstruction logic of contemporary European menswear.