Was it a carnival or a film screening; a techno rave or a chill club night? It’s always hard to tell with Xander Zhou, a fixture of China’s fashion industry and a must-see at Shanghai Fashion Week. A year ago he fashioned his runway show into an intergalactic symposium. Last season, it was a couture-esque salon show at a venue stylized as a museum gallery. This time around, he created a time-warping carnival that zigzagged from Zhou’s singular brand of neo-futurism to courtly Medieval Europe and back again for an after-party—Zhou loves a good night out—which he hosted at Shanghai’s trendy System club with a lineup of his favorite DJs.
Despite his eye for grandiosity, Zhou has a touch for making the most elaborate feel personal. His idea this season was to look at theaters and ballets of yore to craft a collection based on their archetypes: harlequins, courtesans, jousters, dancers, et al. He singled out the ballet de cour and the commedia dell’arte as two somewhat opposing traditions he borrowed from to transport them to his own imagined future: “They were integral elements of European pre-Lent carnivals,” he said, explaining that ballets were “displays of the monarchy’s power,” staged in royal venues with nobles as heroes or deities, while the comedies were performed by professional actors with bandits and satire at the forefront.
Zhou is a well-researched designer whose concepts rival academic theses. He’s built his runway collections with the future as his primary preoccupation, letting his commercial output be informed by his often outlandish ideations. He offered court jester uniforms in the shape of colorblocked bodysuits, which one could see fly off the shelves as sweaters or easy second-skin knits. Particularly promising were his tailoring extrapolations: He transfigured classic tuxedo jackets into a bomber, and combined medieval breeches with slim-fitting slacks. Most inventive was the way in which he flattened and reduced the silhouette of a suit to a caricature composed of simple geometric shapes.
Back to the original question: It was everything all at once: a film screening of a futuristic carnival followed by a techno rave with elements of a chill club night, including masseuses stationed on the venue’s top floor. What makes Zhou such a compelling designer to watch is that whatever he’s doing, he always goes all the way.