Finding young designers who focus on fabrics and textiles rather than instantly appealing visual effects and current trends may be difficult, but London-based Chinese-born Xuzhi Chen is one of them.
The designer graduated from Central Saint Martins and worked for J.W. Anderson and Craig Green. Chen founded his label Xu Zhi in 2014, and was nominated for the H&M Design Awards in 2015, the LVMH Prize in 2016, and the Woolmark Prize.
After showcasing in the Fashion Hub Market in Milan, the label made its second appearance in the Italian fashion capital last week, when Giorgio Armani allowed the young designer to showcase his new collection at the Armani Theatre.
Xuzhi Chen's graduate collection revolved around yarn elements and textile embroideries. For his new collection, he opted for sophisticated moods and details, and this time his fabric research focused on deconstructed elements.
The collection opened with designs in nappa leather matched with pieces characterised by a raw-edge. The designs that followed were more interesting: cropped jackets, high-waist trousers and dresses, tops and skirts were made by hand-braiding yarns into ropes and then stitching them together onto a base fabric, creating in this way with them curved elements. At times the raw edges haemorrhaged into a silky fringe that sprouted from the hem of a skirt. In other cases the textiles looked as if they had been shattered, frayed and recombined together.
The artisanal techniques and highly textural surfaces employed for these designs could have been metaphorically used to hint at human emotions and at our modern existences falling apart in the maelstrom of unxpected social and political events.
The results looked raw but sophisticated, and the show seemed coherently edited for a young designer. As it usually happens in these cases, it will be worth waiting to see how the label grows up and develops in the next few seasons, but the fact that this young designer focuses on collages of textures and materials to create innovative construction techniques plays in his favour. Hopefully, Xuzhi Chen will have the time to develop them further and his textile research will not be corrupted by the fast rhythms of the industry.
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