At Shanghai Film CHAO, a 1930s building that folds Chinese and Western architectural influences into one another, Samuel Gui Yang found an apt setting for a collection about cultural crossovers and the pleasures of transformation. The starting point was Green Snake, Tsui Hark’s 1993 film starring Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong, a modern retelling of the ancient Chinese legend of the white snake. For designers Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén, the duo behind the label, there was no shortage of material to shed and reassemble.
Water set the mood, from rippling waves to the hazy blues of glaciers and smoke, punctuated by electric green and soft pink. Painterly prints, washed surfaces, and graduated colors seemed to shift with models’ bodies. For a brand whose silhouettes have often favored generous proportions, this season brought a more sinuous line: fitted, layered jerseys, elongated shapes, and openwork that traced the figure rather than skirting around it. Snakeskin patterns were printed onto silk or woven into jacquards; less literal than it sounds, the motif suggested clothing as a process of continual shedding and renewal.
Chinese references, the designers explained, are not decorative flourishes added to a Western framework but part of their creative practice. Here, the conversation extended from a Song-dynasty painting of water to revived archival prints from the brand’s own past. The location made the point without laboring it: history, like fashion, is rarely a straight line. Sometimes it slithers.