I regret not coming to MODE sooner!
When we look at the younger generation of designers
When we talk about cultural inheritance and innovation
When the relationship between clothing and people is constantly explored
Market-oriented and commercial-oriented
At the 2024 Fall/Winter MODE exhibition
How designers think about these questions
Founded in 2023, Q&KIU, a young brand, takes exquisite clothing and comfortable tailoring as its main appeal, pursues the ease and freedom of wearing, and takes "exploring how to make clothes better serve our bodies" as the core of its design concept, and allows wearers to enjoy the care brought by clothing through free and loose silhouettes and natural high-end fabrics.
This is the brand's second collection, which coincides with the Year of the Dragon, and features a collaboration with British artists called "Dragon Chains", which combines organza prints with hand-beaded techniques to bring the dancing dragon and phoenix to a woolen jacket.
The core of Q&KIU's design philosophy is to "explore how to make clothes better serve our bodies". Each piece of clothing is like a "spiritual offering", which nourishes our body and mind in the most natural way, elevates our energy, and allows us to find inner balance and harmony in the bustling city life.
Wang Qi, the owner of the brand, said: "Q&KII carefully selects and develops high-end natural fabrics such as mulberry silk and cashmere as the main materials, and we hope that the wearer will feel the care brought to us by the clothes. So as to know yourself better, accept yourself, love yourself, and gain more security and trust from yourself. What we convey is a powerful attitude to life, and once you have power, you are free. ”
Adhering to the style of "elegant and poetic", the new Chinese ready-to-wear brand Ink has created an exhibition space full of poetry and traditional aesthetics.
As a ready-to-wear brand based on new Chinese aesthetics under the Flashback Clothing Group, the brand name "ink" is taken from the image full of oriental charm and traditional cultural color, which is intended to integrate Chinese heritage into modern design, meet the deep pursuit of culture, art, fashion and aesthetics of contemporary independent women, take daily clothing as the carrier, continue the charm and artistic conception of oriental aesthetics, and use a poetic design language to express the exploration of the true self and life philosophy in the work, showing the charm of new Chinese clothing with different tastes and styles.
At the exhibition site, the brand's online live broadcast room also carried out synchronous live sales of some seasonal products, and when the ordering venue was transformed into a live broadcast shopping venue, the online and offline synchronous linkage enabled the brand to simultaneously reach the buyer end and the consumer market, so as to establish a multi-dimensional influence and market vitality.
"I'm from Suzhou, Suzhou has a big specialty is the intangible cultural heritage fabric Song Jin, so this time we also brought a lot of intangible cultural heritage process design, because the process is complex, requires old-fashioned manufacturing techniques, so the output is very low, the fabric itself is very scarce, but its own luster is very good-looking, low-key luxury, after wearing it is the feeling of its own temperament."
When talking about the inheritance of new Chinese style and intangible cultural heritage crafts, Gao Pan, the brand manager from Suzhou, said, "I hope to bring this brand to all parts of the country, and then even go to the future and abroad, because I think Chinese style is very beautiful, the aesthetics of the ancestors are imprinted in the DNA of our Chinese, and there is a sentence that says it very well - Hualiu is the top stream, and our products will definitely go longer and further." ”
In front of the YQDFZ booth, a garment made of "pockets" was particularly eye-catching, using the combination of webbing and perforated pockets to create a three-dimensional pocket design all over the body, making a black down jacket a must-have for winter quite interesting. "Our brand is called 'Fun Clothing' (YQDFZ), and our philosophy is that interesting people can wear interesting clothes", Xia Wu, brand marketing introduced, "This dress is full of pockets, and you can insert flowers all over your body, and it becomes a 'flower dress', that is, you can put anything on it, and you don't know which pocket I put my money in!" With his demonstration, when the blooming flowers and daily necessities such as mobile phones, tissues, lipsticks, water bottles and other small objects are put into the pockets in turn, the interaction and relevance between the clothes and the wearer continue to deepen.
"The theme of our design exhibit is plants, and we hope to express our respect and love for nature through clothing design. From the delicate tree to the tough bark, from the rough bone to the rough place, every detail is full of design inspiration, and we have incorporated these elements into the design, and we have started a fun and design design journey. "The shapes, textures and colors from plants are mapped onto the garments, becoming a striking presence in winter.
YQDFZ's designs are always full of whimsy, such as a soft down vest that can be disassembled into a practical crossbody bag for commuting; Round feathers are spliced together to form a scarf, which can also be transformed into a shawl...... It is a creative and personalized fashion brand dedicated to bringing people a fun clothing experience, constantly exploring the joy of fashion and creativity when dismantling the easter eggs contained in clothing design.
At the exhibition, Cui Xinyue, the founder and manager of the MASTER YUE brand, wore a crisp black suit with a special print on the collar to highlight the theme of the series - by extracting the colors and elements of the Mogao Grottoes murals and combining them with modern suit design, trying to find a balance between tradition and modernity.
The color of the whole series is extracted from the colors of Dunhuang murals, using black, coffee and gray, with original prints with elements of Mogao Grottoes murals, the pattern combines the costumes of the characters in the murals with modern suit styles, which is a visual feast of the perfect combination of traditional culture and Western version. The wind and sand in the northwest are also restored to the garment, and the grainy fabric is used to create a feeling of sand erosion and create a unique texture.
"In terms of patterns, we have made a lot of original prints, all of which are extensions of traditional Chinese culture, for example, this season is to present some key elements on the Dunhuang murals, and we have also made a lot of new combinations, so that he can wear a suit." Behind the inheritance and innovation, MASTER YUE hopes that traditional art "can come out of the past history, so that modern young people can be confused to see that we still have a lot of very precious assets of art." ”
In terms of clothing structure, the costume elements of the characters in the murals of the Mogao Grottoes and the curves of the flying streamers are specially extracted and combined with the style of modern suits. This combination not only makes the whole collection more visually impactful, but also gives a sense of history in the process of wearing. "MASTER YUE AW24 Mogao Grottoes Suit Collection is a tribute and inheritance of the murals of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, and we hope that through this series of designs, more people can understand and cherish our history and culture, and at the same time feel the charm of the combination of tradition and modernity." When Eastern aesthetics meets Western deconstruction, MASTER YUE combines Mogao Grottoes-style original prints with local tailoring to create a unique visual effect, and also allows more people to understand and cherish this rich history and culture through clothing.
As an old friend of the MODE exhibition, Wilson, a designer of "i-people" with caps and masks, once again came with the brand's REDEMPTIVE full of vitality design. Founded in 2018, REDEMPTIVE, a high-end fashion street style brand, is committed to researching and exploring the possibilities of high-tech fashion, and integrating the concepts of sustainability and social responsibility into the brand.
"We hope to integrate fashion with some technological areas, and continue to break some existing rules and regulations to achieve more breakthroughs, so many of the designs on our clothes are functional, for example, they can be removed and replaced with other accessories, or they can be lengthened or shortened." By breaking the traditional concept of a single type of clothing, the same clothing presents more than two different forms, such as using the dismantling details of zippers and buttons, and colliding and merging different elements in it.
The lace-up shirt design allows customers to take off the sleeves freely, and a piece of clothing can achieve a free combination of long sleeves and short sleeves; The washed series is based on denim fabrics as the core, recovering out-of-season inventory from the factory, and then remaking it through washing processing to realize the recycling of fabrics; The seamless branding also changes the traditional way of sewing the logo to the inside of the collar for a more technical and minimalist feel.
"Now our consumers, in addition to thinking that a piece of clothing looks good to wear, many consumers actually attach great importance to some of the stories and concepts behind it, so some of our designs are also trying a lot of conceptual things, including the concept of environmental protection that everyone has promoted in recent years, and I myself think this is a very important issue, so a series of attempts on environmental protection have always been very in line with the original intention of our brand to break through the framework."
In addition to participating in the MODE exhibition this year, the itinerary to participate in the exhibition in Paris has also been planned, and when it comes to the next step for the brand, Wilson said that in the current environment, each brand may need to develop some of its own retail ports, whether online or offline, which is also a direction that we will focus on in the future. ”
Manuscript: Ruixue
视觉:Eirene
Image source: Shanghai Fashion Week Organizing Committee, provided by the brand
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