Louis Shengtao Chen has many, many feelings. “This season the woman is getting mad,” the designer said backstage after his fall 2024 show in Shanghai. “She’s a little bit crazy, she’s angry!” Like every season, Chen explained, the woman in question is the female version of himself. So what is he angry about?
A looming feeling of instability, the long-term effects of the pandemic—which we are experiencing in real time now—an industry strained by economic uncertainty, your everyday anxiety. TL; DR, just pick your poison.
All that said, Chen also has many, many ideas. While he was quick to declare that this is not a thematic collection, one could find a few common threads: There were some flora and fauna in the shape of rosettes and butterfly and deer prints (the latter of which graced the cover of Vogue China’s Shanghai Fashion Week edition on a coat); there were gloriously bouncy, ballooning bustles and panniers and crinolines shaped with Chen’s signature irreverence and exacting technical finesse; and there were riffs on what the designer christened as “streetwear glamour.”
These consisted of demi-couture-ish cropped zip hoodies covered in rose appliques, slouchy tailored trousers, ultra-suede shearling vests, mohair maxi dresses with sweeping tentacular hems, and sequin “puffies” worn as gloves or leg warmers, which delivered a calming ASMR effect on the runway. Balancing these more casual offerings was a run of deliciously tailored coats, roomy louche slips, and deftly shaped corsets—if you need proof of how well Chen knows his way around a girdle, just take a look at how he snatched a shearling coat with some satin and a few pieces of boning.
Chen identified evening fabrications as his comfort zone, “what people identify as Louis Shengtao Chen,” he said, and explained that the challenge here was to stretch his point of view to the street. “We are very comfortable with doing stuff that is very romantic, softer, and beautiful,” he said. “This was the first time we did something in this real juxtaposition with streetwear.” He did so to great effect. At just 27 Chen is remarkably self-aware but still preserves the naiveté that makes his work exciting.
But what is it that drives Chen crazy? “I’m always crazy about romance!” he exclaimed, to which his publicist quipped in reply: “such a Pisces.” Emotional, sensitive, and imaginative yet introspective and intellectual. A duality between fantasy and reality. Sounds just like a LouisShengtao Chen collection.