Claudia Li (Q2793)
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Claudia Li is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Claudia Li |
Claudia Li is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
If Claudia Li’s spring collection feels like an invitation to dance, to party, and to fall in love, that’s because it is. At the same time, it’s not totally escapist. The starting point was the newlywed’s September wedding in Hawaii. “I was so happy at that moment it felt unreal, like I was in a daze, but strangely, at the same time, it was the first time where I felt ‘real,’ ” she explained in her show notes. The original idea was to try to capture that moment—Look 19, a tulle bow-neck dress with a train, even nods to her own dress—but with the pandemic and the protests, she became more focused on “the idea of bringing fantasies into reality.”She accomplished that in different ways. Rendered with a pearly iridescence, a hooded coat with a drawstring waist and patch pockets went from functional to fantastic. A white denim jacket and pants set with a track suit feeling shared space with a cocktail number in a sparkler print covered with sequins. The give and take of the collection might best be represented by Li’s remake of that American classic, the shirtdress. It appeared in several iterations for spring, and Li made each of them her own, whether she was adding panels of pleated tulle to the sides of one version or using her signature shrunken shoulder. (This was beautifully executed so that the seams of the sleeves aligned with those on the back of the garment.)The designer’s use of tulle, and of corsages cum brooches was perhaps one of her more fantastical indulgences. “Sometimes I feel like [my husband and I] are still in high school, and the wedding was sort of like a prom for us,” she explains. “I just wanted the vibe of prom in the 1970s and 1980s, just that kind of dazed mood.”There’s nothing wallflower-ish about the designer’s star fabric, a neon-colored floral organza jacquard. Li said she used it to make “the fantasy come alive.” And why not?Adding adult “realness” to the collection was Kennedy Yanko, a Brooklyn-based artist and friend, who modeled the clothes. “Both of us are pushing to have our voices be heard in our industries as minorities and as women,” says Li, “I felt like she could ground the collection because she’s real.”
15 September 2020
Sometimes there is presence in absence. Such was the case, consciously or not, at Claudia Li’s show today. The designer lost her grandfather last year and she was working through her grief while creating this collection, which she designed to honor his memory in an uplifting way, which it mainly did.Li joked preshow that the creative genes in her family can be traced back to her grandad, a painter who also played eight instruments, one of which was the stringed erhu, which inspired a bright, graphic print. Another textile Li created, featuring goldfish, distilled the designer’s memories of going to market with her grandfather. This was used on a bias-cut slip dress—the same silhouette was also shown in leather—that had the softness, flow, and ease the collection needed.Adding levity to the proceedings was the soundtrack as well as the hand-beaded Tevas, worn with socks. There was a whiff of a schoolgirl sensibility throughout, starting with the first look, an oversize bead-trimmed coat worn with an enormous pussycat bow blouse and topped with a fetching beret that charmingly made the model look as if she had been playing dress-up games. There was gingham too, some in pink, and it was very effective when printed on translucent vinyl, jelly jacket–style.Oh so ’80s were the sloped, drop-shoulder, tapered-sleeve silhouettes Li carried over from spring. This season she used them on coats and some Claude Montana–esque jackets. They felt like fashion statements rather than keepers, especially on the bulky quilted padding looks. Coming, they appeared a bit aggressive; going, they looked a bit deflated. These silhouettes commanded a lot of space, but almost in an overcompensating way. It was as if Li, a designer who is unafraid to wear her heart on her sleeve, was taking up space to fill a void.
9 February 2020
Now in her fifth year, Claudia Li referred to this collection as “Phase Two.” She considered it to be the “the essence of the past four years.” In other words, half a decade into the journey of her eponymous line, Li is a lot more comfortable in her own skin and with her work. She’s designing what she feels is authentic to who she is and mirrors what she wants out of fashion. The result for Spring was a collection that was heavily craft-oriented and fabulously technical.On first blush, Li’s new lineup looked like something you might wear while gardening, or, better yet, drinking a mug of tea while looking out your window, imagining that if you had a little more time, you’d probably have a garden. Spring’s pieces took a second to grow on you, and they bloomed with meaning over the course of the show. One sumptuous cream sweater was activated by UV light, which soon revealed a print made from Li’s name. A calf-length pleated skirt turned out to be made of the same windbreaker fabric as its companion jacket. Then there was the collection’s tearjerker and highlight: a recurring photo print of Li’s parents in their 20s. In it, her mother stands shoeless on a rock in a little batik dress as her dad grins beside her. Both the batik pattern and the photo were duplicated in several garments, paying homage to Li’s past while leaning into the future.Li’s labor is one of love and of patience. Her clothes are about nuance; if you don’t look closely and let the details sink in, you might just miss something.
11 September 2019
“I wanted to focus more on the CL woman,” explained Claudia Li. It’s a task that the young designer has taken to heart in recent seasons. In Li’s mind, her woman is the sort of happy-go-lucky hard-worker who goes to SoulCycle then a soju bar after. “She has a real life, she has a career, she doesn’t have time for a glam change,” Li added. “She has to look good all the time, but she has to be comfortable.”Comfort is embedded in the brand’s identity. For Resort, Li continued to expand on ideas introduced in previous seasons, like the roomy paracord-drawstring skirts and voluminous lilac mesh coat-dresses with detachable neckerchiefs. “They’re shaped a bit like bunny ears,” Li said, describing the design detail that recurred twice on the chest of a soft white collared shirt, as well as on the pocket of a white leather trench coat.The ears were a nod to one of Li’s creature comforts: the stuffed pink toy rabbit she carried around as a child. The reference also appeared as the pale pink hue of her denim separates and a geometric bunny graphic on knit tees and sweatshirts. Another comfort: her mother’s spaghetti recipe, which she reimagined as an abstract curvilinear print that showed up on organza-overlaid jackets. “I call it my happy pasta print!” she said—a nice example of the playful yet personal approach that defines the new Claudia Li.
6 June 2019
Since her September show, which notably featured an all-Asian cast, Claudia Li’s inbox has been inundated with messages from women who found emotional resonance on her runway. Buoyed by their personal stories, the designer forged ahead this season with another collection informed by her individual interests and roots.The recurring motif came from a flat-lay photograph of a lily, taken by Li in her studio. She magnified the image by 500 percent to create a close abstraction of petals and leaves, then splashed it across all manner of items. It worked equally well on a coral silk calf-length dress, blue pajama-like separates, and a black-and-white mini with a twist at the front. That last piece felt lighter and younger than Li’s past work, while the first maintained the elegant inclusivity (flattering on all ages and bodies) that has defined her. It’s worth noting the fluffy fun of her Mongolian lambswool items, particularly the little slides and those enormous bags. “It’s a bag, but you could use it as a pillow!” she said, laughing. In other words, the platonic ideal of a Fashion Week accessory.
11 February 2019
Claudia Li just returned home to New Zealand for the first time in 13 years—small surprise that her latest offering for Pre-Fall drew directly from her childhood memories. Specifically, Li played off the vegetable block-print paintings she created in kindergarten, a practice that will be familiar to many but held special formational significance to Li and her family of artists.Yes, those abstract red and white circles and squares are a reference to the potato, cut in half and dipped in ink to create a geometric print. Li splashed it on long pleated skirts and sheath dresses with a little tie-on apron to suggest an artist’s smock. Smocking of the technical sort appeared diagonally across the front of a comfy sack dress that concealed a clever pocket inside of a cut-out, and there were several strong collared shirts with corset-like boning to create structure.Once more, Li revisited the sportswear references from the past two seasons: coatdresses cinched with paracord and lots of waterproof items. One standout was a long black nylon slip of a dress with an intricately woven black-and-white paracord belt. The fabric contained a hidden print, near invisible to the naked eye. When doused with water (or rain), a fall of hand-drawn umbrellas slowly comes into view. A neat trick that Li cleverly worked into raincoats, as well.
4 December 2018
It took three years and eight collections for Claudia Li to have a revelation—that her existing output of tightly edited lookbooks and presentations was not honest nor authentic. “I feel like I’ve hidden myself in this perfect little world where everything is static, and actually, personality-wise, that’s not really me,” Li said before presenting Spring 2019. “I think it’s time to really tell people who I am.”Today she did just that at her first official runway show, and in order to introduce new and existing fans (including the very buzzy actress Awkwafina, who sat front row) to the real Li, the designer sent out a collection brimming with personal touchstones. Li grew up in New Zealand, and her mother’s house there was embroidered on a white T-shirt and the back of a light-wash denim jacket as a semi-Pointillist landscape. Many of the graphics were quite soft, as Li, who has not been back to her hometown for 13 years, hoped to depict them as hazy childhood memories.“My mom is this crazy flower lady, and as a child, all the flowers seemed really big to me, so we enlarged them,” Li said. These were Mount Cook lilies, a form of ranunculus native to New Zealand. Li printed them on everything from jumpers to starched collared shirts to swinging silk duster coats. At times, they resembled Dutch wax prints; at others, they looked more like blurred, impressionist watercolors. There were also 3-D blooms, stitched into skirts and on knits, and very delicate hand-embroidered silk organza patches, made by a collective of women in Madagascar, stuck here and there.To drive her point home, Li featured a cast of all-Asian models. “This collection is so personal to me, and I feel I need to be represented by myself and by different types of Asian women,” Li said. Where some might look at the runway and see a blanket of same-same, Li sees a rich, diverse range of faces that reflect her own personal rejection of Asian female stereotypes. “I’m not good at math; I played in a metal band when I was in high school; I ran away with a surfer and got dragged home by my dad,” Li recalled, laughing. “When it comes to Asian women, there are so many of us,” she went on. “We’re different; we have big personalities. It’s important to show who we are.” Li’s right about that, and by showing the world more of who she is, her future has never looked brighter.
9 September 2018
Claudia Li has been thinking about her hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, which she hasn’t seen in 13 years. “I guess I’ve been homesick,” she said, a feeling she intends to further explore for Spring 2019. Here, the reflections turned toward her childhood home, where her mother still lives and tends a garden, and its clusters of ranunculus and roses lead directly to Resort’s hand-painted floral print.Those heart-shaped green leaves and peonies bloomed on short-sleeve skirt sets cut from a waterproof nylon; a special coated gabardine also conjured the image of morning dew and was used on a three-piece khaki trench set (top, skirt, and cape) and a dressy coat with slight puff sleeves and a ruched band around the waist. There was a second abstract pointillist print that, Li explained, was drawn to resemble the confetti fall of buds from trees in late summer.One noteworthy design detail was the addition of removable hip pads, zipped into internal side pouches on ankle-grazing skirts and suit jackets. “I call them confidence enhancers,” Li said, laughing. They, too, were inspired by her mother, as the exaggerated hips create a more “maternal figure.” As a matter of course, the clothes read mature, whether or not that was Li’s intent. On the flip side, they did work well with the looser silhouettes she employs to accommodate more than one body type (always a good thing); the added shape provided a nice lift.
8 June 2018
Like many of her peers, Claudia Li was feeling a bit dismal about the world when she designed her Fall 2018 collection. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the clothes, though. Her palette ranged from neon pink to Kelly green to pure white, with luminous sequins and Lurex-spiked brocades thrown in for a burst of shine. She chalked up the good vibes to a Turkish fairy tale she stumbled across calledThe Silent Princess, which revived her feelings of hope, perseverance, and courage in dark times. It’s a noble jumping-off point for a collection, though most women won’t necessarily hear the story—they’ll just be drawn to the uplifting colors and special fabrics.Before launching her namesake line in 2015, Li cut her teeth at JW Anderson, where she developed an eye for minimal, architectural silhouettes and the odd button or arty flourish. In recent seasons, she’s edged into more feminine territory, trading boxy dresses for flowery ones and experimenting with fancier custom fabrics. It’s not entirely clear who Li is designing for; young women want clothes that feel easy, and some of Li’s pieces are just shy of being that. The shawl-collar dresses may have checked all the boxes of what girls are looking for in a dress right now—long-sleeved, covered-up, minimal—but they felt too demure. A sparkling magenta button-down and pleated skirt had a more promising, curve-skimming silhouette, but it’s hard to picture where Li’s woman would actually wear it. The look was a little too fancy to kick around in sneakers, but perhaps too quirky for a cocktail setting. Li might want to delve a little deeper into what her customers (and the women she wants to become customers) really want, and why. We’re all searching for ways to address our feelings about the world around us, but it’s not likely to be with a roomy, body-concealing pleated dress.
12 February 2018