Yang Li (Q3706)
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Yang Li is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yang Li |
Yang Li is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
There was a great deal of work put into this collection, in which Yang Li interestingly collaborated with Magnum photographer Antoine d’Agata on a piece of artistic anthropology. Li left mainland China before he was a teen but returns there often and has been especially present while cocreating this project. For it he announced an open casting call for female portrait subjects on WeChat and other platforms, to which 6,000 women responded. From these a short list of 600 were selected, with each of whom Li spent at least half an hour in conversation while she told him about her life. Finally Li selected 25 women with whom he most strongly connected to sit for D’Agata. Those portraits appeared on the suiting and dresses in Japanese bonded satin, all black, that made up this collection. They will also be part of a book, designed by Theseus Chan, in which each subject’s portrait and excerpted interview will be reproduced in a record sleeve format. While reading some of them, the degree of intimate confession and frank expression about the subjects’ quality of life—both good and bad—was notable. In terms of unpicking the surface to dig into the fabric of the life experience of the women Li interviewed, and trying to cultivate a relationship with them via his collections, this was an impressive and thoughtful act of commitment.
22 June 2019
During a flying showroom appointment this morning, Yang Li explained that this menswear collection is a remixed and updated compilation of some of his—and his clients’—favorite past pieces. That remix was achieved in collaboration with a roster of Li-loved musicians old and new: Genesis P-Orridge, Godflesh, Michael Gira, Psychic TV, Ramleh, Swans, Torturing Nurse, Tropic of Cancer, Yung Lean, and Zuoxiao Zuzhou.In harmony with these cocreators, Li applied mixed-up fan patches to the back of biker shorts and starkly graphic white stenciling to the front of black suiting. There was a gothic Godflesh robelike parka and a hard-edged denim donkey jacket, a cool red-fringed black shirt and a typically tough KTC-produced trench, and a fine satin-lined double-faced fish-tail parka. The collection was entitled Greatest Hits (Side A), which suggests Li is going to move onto some B-side rarities and more remixes come next season. And there will be more vinyl than that applied to the shoulder of that donkey jacket: Each musical artist is contributing a track to what will become a Yang Li LP.
22 June 2019
So, if all goes to plan, at 4:00 p.m. Paris time and 10:00 a.m. New York time today, Yang Li’s 43-look collection will go live on Instagram via the accounts of 27 women in 10 different cities around the world. Following hot on the heels ofCoperniyesterday, Li is at the vanguard of young designers who are taking their work straight to the most-consulted media of our moment.Forty-eight hours ago, all of the participants in what Li is calling his “Automatic Show” received a beautifully wrapped package of Li looks and a letter that read: “This time, I’ve decided to use excitement and collaboration as my compass . . . so here we are . . . . thank you for being part of this daring idea . . . . I invite you to take the outfits enclosed and capture them in your own personal way.”That’s quite a bold surrender of control on the part of the designer. Its upside, however, is tangible: These images look good, are part of an idea that feels truly fresh, and come with the added bonus that designing with such a broad range of specific women in mind has nudged Li to work beyond his usual boundaries. For his old school buddy Lolita Jacobs (@loljacobs), for instance, Li cut a dark and dashing maternity dress—new for him, he said. For Irina Shnitman (@irinashnitman), meanwhile, Li felt compelled to fashion a PVC evening dress he described as: “very sexy-sexy, something I don’t usually do.” But he can. Shnitman took her evening dress to the Hôtel de Crillon for a statuesque vamp to truly do it justice, and she modeled one other look on a Metro platform in a shot that looks like finely composed surveillance footage.The most affecting image is of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle (@pandrogyne), who is currently at home in New York undergoing treatment for leukemia. All of the earnings from the T-shirt she is wearing—and which she codesigned with Li—will be contributed to the costs of her care. Asia Argento (@asiaargento) seems like she shot her outfits—a long sleeveless tartan coat and a mid-length, panel-fronted black dress—in the hotel after attending the Lanvin show yesterday. Lili Sumner (@lilisumner) crashed out, albeit not quite as comprehensively as Ali Michael (@ali_michael) or Gaïa Orgeas (@cheezylove).Surveying the results of his Insta-experiment, Li said: “I love these pictures. They are so much more interesting than a normal lookbook. And I haven’t had to art direct anything. It’s been about letting go . . . .
I’ve given them the ingredients, but they end up cooking the dish.” This fine idea must have cost a fortune in FedEx fees, but it was worth it: Putting the clothes out there to live and be lived in makes for strong content. And yes, there is a hashtag: #YangLiAW19
28 February 2019
Yang Li is a little distracted. The moves he’s been making in China are coming to a head: Talk of a new partner, once on the horizon, has become much more imminent. He has been living on the plane and as focused on contracts as he usually is on cutting fresh iterations of his romantically dark, musically influenced menswear and womenswear. That’s impressive paperwork action for a fellow who has a tendency to forget his parking tickets.The seasons roll on regardless. For this one Li took a sabbatical from his menswear-first line (paperwork, paperwork, paperwork), but did conjure a Pre-Fall lineup that played sharply tailored Clan MacLeod tartan against shiny puckers of double-dipped PVC and heavily zippered, almost menacingly utilitarian performance outerwear.2087—the year in which Li will turn 100 if he keeps eating his kale and paying his parking tickets on time—was inserted as a future-proof motif in a long wool jacquard coat. An attractive long dress in rust featured an anguished twist at the neckline and a frayed hem.
20 January 2019
Yang Li is a little distracted. The moves he’s been making in China are coming to a head: Talk of a new partner, once on the horizon, has become much more imminent. He has been living on the plane and as focused on contracts as he usually is on cutting fresh iterations of his romantically dark, musically influenced menswear and womenswear. That’s impressive paperwork action for a fellow who has a tendency to forget his parking tickets.The seasons roll on regardless. For this one Li took a sabbatical from his menswear-first line (paperwork, paperwork, paperwork), but did conjure a Pre-Fall lineup that played sharply tailored Clan MacLeod tartan against shiny puckers of double-dipped PVC and heavily zippered, almost menacingly utilitarian performance outerwear.2087—the year in which Li will turn 100 if he keeps eating his kale and paying his parking tickets on time—was inserted as a future-proof motif in a long wool jacquard coat. An attractive long dress in rust featured an anguished twist at the neckline and a frayed hem.
20 January 2019
Yang Li said today he has just finished a year-long project creating a portfolio of photographs of Chinese women shot by the darkly inclined Magnum lensman Antoine d’Agata that will exhibit in London next year. In anticipation, Li stitched the name of some of the subjects—in Pinyin, gothic font—into this collection. Beijing born, Australian raised, a London resident, and thoughtfully dark himself by inclination, Li is currently reengaging with his roots in a major way.This collection, though, saw him stick to his artfully severe guns. Oversize tailoring and shirting with little fiddly details were here in spades, as were distressed hems. A white denim gilet wrapped in a miasma of acid green organza rendered the zipper and pockets unworkable, but the visual effect was arresting. The nearly knee-high leather socks worn over roughly studded slides were really effective accessories: These gave the slouchy streetwear footwear an almost evening feel that was both sexy and self-assured. His collaboration with Austrian outerwear manufacturer KTC evolved into some excellent technical eveningwear in black delineated with white brushstrokes—a viable alternative to the excellent Moncler Genius products currently on offer. His leather dresses with bow details at the back and flat-fronted leather pants were both uncompromisingly self-controlled and assertive. Li is a passionate, true designer who merits a breakthrough—and it would be fitting if his homeland was the source of it.
26 September 2018
Yang Li is a designer who purposefully haunts the fringes of fashion and who finds himself at a crossroads. His last few collections have featured performances from some of his favorite bands, and at this showroom presentation Li said that rather than stage another, he’d decided to take his clothes directly to the music audiences with which he feels such a kinship.Along with friend Olaf Kneer of the CMK architecture firm in London, the designer has created “Yang Li: The Human Machine,” which is an ingenious transportable stage that folds up into a large (relatively) portable trunk. He has already taken it to Vancouver for a gig by Pharmakon and is planning more. “I wanted to emphasize that live music is a physical experience for which there’s no adequate substitute,” said Li. “Not everything can be consumed through mobile phones.”That nostalgic, goth-tinted romance—which comes with a significant shot of shoe-gaze-y disaffection—is one of Li’s most appealing attributes. He makes uniforms for his people, and both his Spring menswear and women’s Resort were greatest-hits medleys of some of the lyrically haunted prints from recent collections. New riffs included sometimes-stenciled pieces assembled from worn-once British Ministry of Defence surplus—olive ripstop, woodland camo, black cotton drill—as well as oversize tailoring for women in an orange houndstooth. His excellent collaborative series with Austrian technical specialist KTC translated into black trenches and Perfectos with more white stenciled print. Li’s side collection—a music merch–focused project called Samizdat—featured some endearing long-sleeved T-shirts that celebrated the seminal (and law-changing) rave at Castlemorton in May 1992.Li is doing what he wants his way. His work is very particular, but with the right support and the right exposure in the right market, he could really take off.
26 June 2018
Yang Li is a designer who purposefully haunts the fringes of fashion and who finds himself at a crossroads. His last few collections have featured performances from some of his favorite bands, and at this showroom presentation Li said that rather than stage another, he’d decided to take his clothes directly to the music audiences with which he feels such a kinship.Along with friend Olaf Kneer of the CMK architecture firm in London, the designer has created “Yang Li: The Human Machine,” which is an ingenious transportable stage that folds up into a large (relatively) portable trunk. He has already taken it to Vancouver for a gig by Pharmakon and is planning more. “I wanted to emphasize that live music is a physical experience for which there’s no adequate substitute,” said Li. “Not everything can be consumed through mobile phones.”That nostalgic, goth-tinted romance—which comes with a significant shot of shoe-gaze-y disaffection—is one of Li’s most appealing attributes. He makes uniforms for his people, and both his Spring menswear and women’s Resort were greatest-hits medleys of some of the lyrically haunted prints from recent collections. New riffs included sometimes-stenciled pieces assembled from worn-once British Ministry of Defence surplus—olive ripstop, woodland camo, black cotton drill—as well as oversize tailoring for women in an orange houndstooth. His excellent collaborative series with Austrian technical specialist KTC translated into black trenches and Perfectos with more white stenciled print. Li’s side collection—a music merch–focused project called Samizdat—featured some endearing long-sleeved T-shirts that celebrated the seminal (and law-changing) rave at Castlemorton in May 1992.Li is doing what he wants his way. His work is very particular, but with the right support and the right exposure in the right market, he could really take off.
26 June 2018
The melancholic world of Yang Li is a very particular and self-referential place. It’s deeply niche, for sure, but it’s sincere.Tonight’s show was held in the gorgeous Gothic church of Saint-Merri. Justin Broadrick, formerly of Napalm Death and others, shoegazed and ululated from within a clustered congregation of amps. As quickly became evident from the1987–2087text on shoes and garments, this was a sort of imagined centenary/funeral/memorial/celebration of Li. Without detecting even the slightest sense of sacrilege or disrespect, there were definite pagan undertones—a witchy-ness—to this show. Models carried calla lilies or a lump of foam meant to look like a meteorite or an impressively large marrow (substituted at the last minute for an unsatisfactory cabbage) as offerings. They were accessorized with floor-length curtains of jet-black hair extensions that wafted dramatically to the rafters as they walked over the church’s impressively efficient underfloor heating vents. One of them came off on the runway and became snarled between the heels of a model’s Cuban-heeled, side-zippered, patent pointed boots: She did a brilliant job completing her walk.More banally but vitally, what was striking was how strong Li’s tailoring looked. His “Ghost Jackets,” which require their owners to wear the lining but have the exterior of the outerwear hang from the top of their spines, are divertingly different. A blue remixed duffle coat made almost regimentally double-breasted with 12 irregularly placed horn toggles was powerfully itself. There was a great double-breasted skirt—a new thing, I think—in leather worn under a1987–2087tee.Despite the unforeseeable hairpiece-meets-boot snafu and whatever contractual situation led to the sudden firing of that cabbage, Ellie Grace Cumming’s excellent styling made Li’s fantasy an immersive and believable moment. It’s great to watch a designer build a world of his (or her) own and deliver some persuasive garments in the process.
28 February 2018