Yueqi Qi (Q3720)
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Yueqi Qi is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yueqi Qi |
Yueqi Qi is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Guangzhou-based designer Yueqi Qi has a big customer base in Japan, and brings some necessary punchiness to the Tokyo schedule with her shows, which are invariably transportive. At a Yueqi Qi show, the message always seems to be: “Get in, loser, we’re going intergalactic.”With experience working on embroidery in Chanel’s atelier, Qi knows how to enliven her collections with heaps of intricate detail that could easily look messy in lesser skilled hands. This time was no exception. Sportswear played a prominent part, with burgundy tracksuits, bowling jerseys, and football shirts, but Qi made it her own by festooning everything with reams of sequins and flowing trims of lace (some of them even had a lace number 7 on the back).A collaboration with Adidas, which the designer has an ongoing relationship with, yielded a bright blue corset and a clip-on tennis skirt that, decorated with plastic detailing as it was, felt authentically part of the Yueqi Qi universe and slotted in nicely with the rest of the sportswear. Elsewhere, flared jeans had spirals of frills or were zig-zagged with seams, and hems were often decorated with the jellyfish-like trims that have become something of a signature for Qi. Though her work is rooted in Y2K codes—baggy denim, platform shoes, mini skirts, and seapunk vibes—the designer has carved out her own unmistakable aesthetic.For the finale, the models appeared in force, marching together down the runway as one, channeling the edgy-yet-welcoming community spirit that the designer is known for. Qi didn’t speak to the press after tonight’s show, and hadn’t come back on questions over email by the time this review was filed. A shame—though her clothes are always fun and stimulating to witness on the runway, some more context would have added another dimension to their charm.
5 September 2024
After two seasons showing in Tokyo, Yueqi Qi brought her collection back to her native China, staging an off-calendar show on the first night of Shanghai Fashion Week. The designer described her collection as her very own “Ride of the Valkyries.” And while this nod to the Richard Wagner epic aligns with her idea of a group of Yueqi Qi-clad heroines fighting the pervasiveness of the URL in hopes to return to life IRL, one can’t help but place this depiction of a return to Valhalla against her own homecoming.The Guangzhou-based Qi launched her label in 2019 after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2018 and cutting her teeth as an intern at the Chanel embroidery atelier. She was a semifinalist for the LVMH Prize in 2022, and one of the emerging labels selected by Alessandro Michele to be part of the first edition of Gucci Vault. Qi’s interplanetary biomorphic aesthetic, with intricate floral fabrications made up of hundreds of laser cut petals, has become popular with celebrities—fans include FKA Twigs and Blackpink’s Lisa, for whom the designer made a painstakingly embellished corset for Coachella in 2023. Fun fact: Qi’s work featured in a couple of looks at the inaugural Vogue World in New York back in 2022. Needless to say, Yueqi Qi is very much a thing.And so it should be no surprise that when Qi put a call out to her customers and asked them to donate their clothes for an upcycled project within this collection, they showed up in droves. They donated everything from jeans and sweaters to old headphones. What Qi understands well and knows to leverage is a concept that often eludes many of her counterparts: community. “They were excited to participate because it’s a different way of being a part of the brand,” Qi said at her showroom. Plus, they will all have the bragging rights to say that what they might have seen as trash Qi saw as worthy of turning into a runway-worthy treasure.The headphones in question, many of which came from airlines, said Qi, were separated by color and braided and knitted into intricate floral ornaments and jewelry. The knits were unraveled and re-knitted into playful crochet flower dresses, and the denim and the rest of the garments were laser cut into hearts and layered over each other and pieces of recycled plastic to create Qi’s floral wonders.
Adidas provided sneakers, which Qi deconstructed for the show to drive her upcycling storyline forward (they were cool and covetable, this is a budding partnership Adidas should pursue as a formal collaboration). Most outlandish was the way in which Qi incorporated Apple Watches into her opulent jewelry, encrusting them in crystals and using them in lieu of precious stones.Qi has made a name for herself for the way in which she merges the natural with the futuristic, but her vision is equal parts timeless in its ingenuity and perfectlynowin its wearability. Be it a space-y headphones headdress, a red carpet-ready cascading laser cut floral frock, or a pair of fabulous jeans to go to the store in, Qi is making her brand the fashion Valhalla for contemporary Valkyries.
9 April 2024
Kissa-Seibu is a traditionalkissaten(Japanese coffee shop) in Shinjuku that looks as though it hasn’t been reupholstered since it opened in 1964. With its old-world charm, it’s a popular spot among Tokyo’s cool kids, but it will close its doors later this year. On a cloudy Monday afternoon, every seat in the house was filled, but the guests weren’t there to order a banana parfait.“I never like showing on therunwayrunway, with the big lights and everything,” designer Yueqi Qi says. “I like somewhere that has a story behind it.” And so the 27-year-old sent her cast of models down the aisles of the café.It was Qi’s first time showing in Tokyo—she usually presents her work at Shanghai Fashion Week—and the collection continued on with the astrological themes she’s been exploring since last season. For this collection, she reconsidered the linear trajectory of time, mixing psychedelic 1960s references with a Y2K sensibility, while the Japanese words for past, present, and future echoed over the speakers. The invitation to show in Tokyo had come from Qi’s longtime collaborator Tomihiro Kono, a Japanese hairstylist who created the show’s incredible cyberpunk-style wigs.Beyond the anachronism, there’s a hell of a lot of detail that goes into Yueqi Qi’s designs; a stint as a Chanel intern has informed her innovative handiwork. Here, beaded nets of laser-cut plastic took on the aesthetic delicacy of lace, and scatters of sequins and crochet worked to elevate the more wearable staples. Elsewhere, oversized denim jackets and ’90s track pants unzipped across the legs and sleeves to reveal peeks of printed solar systems hiding within, giving the impression that the clothes contained the cosmos themselves.The singer Kom_I, who this week announced her pregnancy on Instagram, was the star of the show, her baby bump glittering with a swoosh of silver paint. She and Qi followed each other online, but their first IRL meeting was a happy coincidence in Tokyo a few months ago: “I ran into her by chance at a hair salon and asked her to model,” Qi says. A sign from the universe if ever there were one.
14 March 2023
Yueqi Qi’s spring 2023 collection began with no less an inspiration than the universe: astronauts, faraway planets, and individual conceptions of paradise. “We have this old Chinese saying that one person’s heaven is another person’s hell, but peace can exist in the destitute and destitution can exist in peace,” Qi said over Zoom.This manifested in abstract prints, skin-baring tops made of pieced-together planets and rocket ships, and a cotton poplin top with a collar made to resemble the neckline of an astronaut’s uniform.Qi’s own corner of the universe—Guangzhou, China—is a big supplier of denim. After seeing the waste created by these factories, Qi approached one and asked if she could use the discarded textiles for her own collection. “They were hesitating, and I was like, ‘I can show you all your trousers can be made into other trousers,’” Qi said. As a result, the majority of the collection is made from upcycled jeans.Known for her impeccable technical skills—she graduated from Central Saint Martins and interned at Chanel—Qi seemed to focus on more wearable styles this season, with her signature avant-garde, theatrical flair peppered in. There was a wide range, but a chain-mail-esque material made of twisted, laser-cut fabric used to create a 3D effect was especially compelling and unique, whereas a camouflage minidress felt more anonymous. The balance was perfectly struck in the aforementioned white shirt, which synthesized an original idea with a true wardrobe staple.
19 October 2022
Yueqi Qi has spent several collections thinking about love. This season, she’s focused on revenge—not that the two have to be mutually exclusive. Her fall 2022 lookbook, titled Growing Flowers by Candlelight, is staged as a murder mystery inspired byMurder on the Orient Express. The models stand tall in headpieces and arresting garments that mix couture technique with streetwear. Black lilies—the flower of vengeance—are a recurring motif throughout the collection. Each wears a metal headpiece, obscuring their face. Qi wants you to think about who the killer is (if you’ve watched or readMurder on the Orient Express, you already know). “When everyone is guilty nobody is guilty. I thought about hatred because it’s strongly related to love,” Qi says over Zoom from Shanghai.Qi, a Central Saint Martins graduate who interned at Chanel, is often inspired by Chinese folklore as well as her own personal history. That pedigree means she can combine visually arresting beadwork with gravity defying shapes and avant-garde proportions. “My experience working in Paris, and interning in Chanel for a long time, I was thinking about all that craftsmanship is so remarkable,” she says. “I’m telling my story by putting the handicraft first.” Alongside the headpieces—which customers can buy—is a silver cut-out dress that looks like trimming of very heavy and expensive tinsel, and a fuzzy magenta sweater with extra long sleeves and a jagged slit on the side. It makes it look like the wearer was stabbed, albeit elegantly.
25 April 2022
Yueqi Qi doesn’t have to look far for inspiration; her husband plays in a rock band in Shanghai, and their worlds collide in Qi’s hard-core spring 2022 collection. His band even performed in a video Qi produced this season withVogue China; in it they wear iridescent eyeshadow, spiky wigs, and unisex versions of her checkered trousers and lacy shirts.Qi is a designer who pulls from her own experiences; early collections were rooted in her Chinese heritage and folklore. But as her label expands and matures—she recently got a boost of exposure from GucciFest and the Gucci Vault—she’s venturing beyond her borders. Spring 2022’s tougher edge marked a new direction (the collection’s title, Bright Lights Big City, nodded to New York), but it was elevated by her signature beading and embellishments, seen best in the heart-shaped chain-mail dresses and pieced-together sequined tops.Qi spent a year interning in Chanel’s couture department, and during the pandemic her passion for craft became newly meaningful: As the shops and cafés in her Guangzhou neighborhood closed, she went door-to-door hiring women to help her sew, bead, and embellish her garments. Qi trained them and continues to work with them today. It’s just one example of how a brand can support its community and find a higher purpose, wherever it happens to be in the world.
19 October 2021