There’s no telling where Shanghai is headed for sure. Only that it’s on the up and up, especially if someone were to look closely at its burgeoning fashion scene. Just earlier this year, some of the biggest stakeholders in luxury fashion have played their cards in the city; from Louis Vuitton’s pre-fall 2024 ‘Voyager’ show to Balenciaga’s resort 2025 show at the Museum of Art Pudong.
And it all truly came to its apex at the recent Shanghai Fashion Week. Viral runway shows had its moment in StaffOnly’s spring/summer 2025 ‘Lost in Errors’ show: one that contemplated the way we see ourselves online, through fringe wigs that conveyed digital distortion and disproportionate imagery of faces on deconstructed silhouettes. Then, there was the flurry of buzzy brand activations and runway showings by cult Chinese brands—from Shushu/Tong to Mark Gong.
But the spotlight ultimately fell on the Moncler Genius takeover. Erected in a historic shipyard on the Huangpu River, the sprawling ‘City of Genius’ was electric; pulsating with energy unlike any other. Where 10 guest artists and creators including the likes of A$AP Rocky, Rick Owens, Edward Enninful, Jil Sander, Nigo and Lulu Li each transformed a pavilion of their own, giving way to their own co-designed Genius collections. The celebrity pull was no less, considering Rihanna was a plus one herself, and was joined by the likes of Anne Hathaway, Naomi Campbell and Yeonjun of TXT. And in the throes of the colossal affair, there were also the Rick Owens-thrown after parties to look forward to.
But what of the city’s own sartorial sensibilities? Having cemented its station in the fashion week circuit, there’s an undeniable sense of intrigue surrounding the clothes that have sprouted from its home ground. Certainly a knockout feast if any, with a gratifying array of Chinese designers staking their claim to a breadth of collections that demonstrated their hand for adroit tailoring and creative execution. Some flitted the lines of surrealism and the otherworldly, whilst others injected contemporary, feminine tones to more traditional elements. From Hengdi Wang to Joyce Bao and Samuel Guì Yang, these are the standout Chinese designers to know from Shanghai Fashion Week.
Hengdi Wang
Where does fashion end, and art begin? Surely, it was a question that Hengdi Wang proposed with his latest collection titled ‘Cybernetics Blooming Inside of Me’. A proposition of wearable art, the collection saw biomechanical, alienesque elements set against the natural and the organic; of metallic spines and bone structures against diaphanous, ruched silhouettes that mimicked cocoons and transforming states. The exoskeletal approach governed much of his designs, as if to relook the way in which the synthetic and machine has impacted and engineered our biosystems.
Samuel Guì Yang
Showing atop an old warehouse situated on the Suzhou Creek waterway, Samuel Guì Yang’s spring/summer 2025 collection was a melding of the East and West. Present were denim co-ords, delicate silks, and statement dyes, in silhouettes reminiscent of traditional Chinese garb, layered in ways that spoke to the modern fashion consumer. Co-founders Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén had set out to design clothes that were reflective of the current zeitgeist, all while injecting artisanal—and often times, even ancient—elements. The result was a fitting medley of geography, chronology, and culture.
Joyce Bao
A fresh graduate out of Central Saint Martins and a new addition to the Shanghai Fashion Week lineup, Joyce Bao’s debut collection was one that looked to wipe the slate clean. “This collection is about setting the tone; the modernisation of craft, and the coexistence of delicacy and strength,” shared the Chinese-American designer post-show. Wearability was the name of the game, with plenty of the design tropes that were present in her graduate collection resurfaced again here—think billowing slips, barely-there separates and intricate ruched detailing. It was a refreshing change to the maximalism often associated with the Shanghai scene, and marked Bao as a name to watch in the coming years.
