Despite the dreadful and gloomy weather raging outside, the young designer Xiao Li managed to brighten up our Sunday thanks to her innovative designs and original ideas, presenting her collection under Fashion Scout which offers young design talent a platform to showcase their work. Having the Merit and Diesel Awards from the International Talent Support for her MA collection up her sleeve and now being shortlisted for the LVMH Prize make her definitely one to watch.
As an MA Womenswear Knitwear graduate from the Royal College of Art, knitwear was naturally one of the main focuses of her collection in the form of oversized or cropped jumpers, dresses, leg warmers or a maxi skirt in navy and burgundy with the pop of bright orange, purple and baby blue. Fresh-faced models with black wigs cut into bobs carried oversized tote bags, clutches in shapes of a tomato or an animated briefcase and wore shoes on a chunky platform, all made out of silicone – a favoured material for Li as used in her previous collections.
This season she created an illusion of a fabric with embossed texture while actually, it was knitting and used animated-looking knitted graphics on her garments as Li always tries to push the limits and come up with never-seen-before techniques. Therefore models walked down the runway wearing jumpers and knits that looked as if they had a jacket, a coat, a giant tomato or perfume bottle with a slogan “Can science make a better perfume?” drawn on them as a nod to mass consumerism evoking the 1960s pop art. Words written in cloud-like shapes appeared as buttons and prints forming another slogan “Stay healthy, avoid fashion” throughout the collection, expressing the designer‘s love-hate relationship with fashion.
“It’s strange, as a young designer I already feel slightly tired with the fashion industry, yet I know I want to keep doing this. So I always search for something fresh to make myself excited first,” said Li after the show.
by Sara Hesikova
Images courtesy of Purple PR