Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén hosted their spring show atop an old warehouse sitting on the Suzhou Creek, a waterway that breaks Shanghai westbound from the Huangpu River. “East Wind” is the name Yang and Litzén gave the lineup. The designer and his life and creative partner explained: “The term has a different meaning in the West; here east wind is a powerful symbol of the power of transformation.”
The show venue was an Art Deco-style building that used to be a warehouse for the National Industrial Bank of China. Situated on what was once an industrial waterfront, it’s now part of the lively and trendy Jing’an district, which is named after an ancient Chinese Buddhist temple. It’s a fitting medley of geography and chronology—this time-warping, East-meets-West amalgamation is something Yang believes in, and something he very eloquently illustrates with his clothes.
About those: Soft light-wash denim separates, crinkled poplin shirting, and silk-linen trousers were layered on top of each other or worn under tailoring and bomber jackets, all riffing off traditional Chinese styles. A burgundy maxi dress recalled the cheongsam, only it was knit in a loose gauge yarn that revealed the shape of a soaring swallow when stretched against the body. Also taking flight were a run of airy crepe sets, simple slips layered under diaphanous iterations of themselves, and a pale jade green tank dress whose godets caressed the ground with each step.
Yang and Litzén made a pair of bewitching crumpled silk sheaths they hand-dyed and hemmed with minuscule beads. You could see the DIY workmanship in the sometimes uneven dye, which added a patina to the collection. Ditto a woven tunic made of ramie dyed black but beautifully discolored to its raw tone at the hems.
“This is how we dress, it’s how all people dress, really,” said Litzén of their incorporation of more artisanal and sometimes ancient elements: “combining something older with something new.” Yang and Litzén returned to Shanghai Fashion Week last season and are settling into a cadence of selling the majority of their offering during the pre-collection calendar and adding newness for the context of the show in the shape of craft-driven styles. It’s a feedback loop that works, and seems to keep them on their feet. The winds of change have been blowing chez Samuel Guì Yang, and in the right direction.