Shuting Qiu (Q9142)
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Shuting Qiu is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Shuting Qiu |
Shuting Qiu is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
After presenting for a few seasons at Milan Fashion Week, Shuting Qiu showed her spring 2025 collection in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo. “Compared to Milan, Paris challenged me to think about the weather,” said Qiu. “Last time I was showing in a garden, now it’s a completely different atmosphere. Showing inside rather than outside affects styling and accessory choices too. I have to adapt my aesthetic to different markets.”After traveling to Cyprus last April, Qiu found the name of her collection in the island’s mythology: It is said that Venus was born there. Named The Palace Where Venus Descends, the show also made the designer reflect on romanticism. “Venus is the goddess of love, so I wanted my looks to be more romantic by adding moving elements such as fringes and flowers,” she explained. She collaborated with renowned artist Lu Xinjian to incorporate his iconic bold color contrasts and abstract lines into the designs.Musical patterns became an inspiration for prints as well, with dots covering different textiles, while a focus on shoulders showed up thanks to research on how women dressed in traditional attire. “Color-wise, the tints I chose relate to Cyprus’s historical buildings, then they were paired with my bright signature shades and mixed with black and white to create balance,” Qiu said. This time the designer skipped her usual mix-and-match approach to fashion, using only one color to create fractures.A new shoe design was added: A high heel featuring musical patterns became the key to the collection. Qiu also introduced kidswear this season. “We used textile leftovers to create the clothes,” she said. “It was very interesting to adapt my designs to children’s wear for my kind of aesthetic.” Lastly, the soundtrack reflected the collection’s theme by opening the show with a poem by Lena Platonos, a Greek electronic-music composer from the 1980s.
27 September 2024
A recent trip to Vietnam left such a strong impression on Chinese designer Shuting Qiu that she wanted to translate it into her new fall collection. In fact, for this season, Qiu took inspiration not only from the atmospheres and colors of that enchanting country, but also from Vietnamese artist Lê Phổ, a master of oil painting, mostly known for portraying landscapes of his homeland with a nod to French Impressionism. The grace of those art pieces guided Qiu through an exploration of Asian and Western cultures, something she usually does as a signature of her creative approach.Vietnam was there in the more natural color palette—clearly influenced by the delicate hues present in Pho's paintings—and the rich embroideries, made of sequins and beads, used to decorate garments with multicolored flowers, recalling traditional Vietnamese attire. Many sophisticated tweed separates were adorned with blooming appliqués, often creating a chromatic clash or playing with ton sur ton choices. Moreover, flowers got a tridimensional treatment for see-through cardigans and slip dresses on which they were proposed as tulle manipulations. Among the most interesting pieces of this collection were the argyle intarsia dresses that combined cold and warm tones of the recurring flowers; they also echoed geometric patterns that characterize the historical Vietnamese wardrobe.Outwear played a central role: on one hand with padded brocade jackets—a fusion between a blazer and a duvet—and on the other with sumptuous inserts of long faux-fur on coats, blousons, and bombers. A last glamorous touch came via full sequined long gowns that represented the perfect combination between history and modernity, a distinctive trait of Qiu's aesthetic. The silhouettes paid specific homage to the traditional Vietnamese Ao Dai dress.
5 March 2024
“I can see my brand being a bridge between the East and West,” said Shuting Qiu ahead of her spring 2024 show. Set in the gardens of Museo Diocesano, under a warming sun that made her clothes pop, the designer sent ready-to-wear mixed with beachwear and bathing suits down the runway. With inspiration coming from her trip to the island of Tenerife in Spain last April, the collection featured lots of new horizons for Qiu. Acting as the main references were plants and huge flowers she discovered while traveling, as well as landscapes and animals.Qiu felt the need to try something new and fresh, hence the swimwear that accompanied a few other first-timers: sea stars appeared as a new pattern; black and white combinations closed the show. Nevertheless, when asked what the strongest look was, Qiu chose a jacquard blazer featuring embroidered florals and plants with different shades of green, blue and red on a white canvas. It perfectly showed off her label’s craftsmanship.Hangzhou, Qiu’s home town in China, remains an important point of convergence for the designer’s collections, as a source of materials like silk and for the local artisans who do the embroidery. Sustainability is also an important topic in Qiu’s fashion, so she chose to bring recycled denim trousers into the collection. “Fashion is a good way for me to express myself and comment on what happens around me,” she said, encouraging new generations to engage on the matter.With an ongoing collaboration with Ugg boots from last season, hand-painted versions of the chunky shoe reappeared on the runway, depicting panoramas, sea animals and flower combinations. “When I was young I started painting; it’s been a huge epiphany medium for me ever since,” said Qiu. Those same visions informed beauty looks as well, with powerful makeup as if the models’ eyes were blooming or coming alive.
24 September 2023
“Compliment,” by the late Czech abstract painter František Kupka, was the inspiration for Shuting Qiu’s new collection. She is passionate about art and a painter herself. “The painting is made of contrasts, greens and reds collide, like two entities that react to each other. I found it to be very close to my identity as a designer and I started from that idea of contrast to bring my clothes and accessories to life,” she said. The collection clashed a whirlwind of colors, prints and appliqués.Qiu uses her pieces as canvases, layering materials and colorings, so much so that it is necessary to come back and inspect the looks more than once to notice every aspect of them. A suit where the top piece was cut like a studded jacket and a pleated miniskirt, coordinated by a patchwork of motifs in between anthracite gray and candy pink, was partially decorated by 3D and multicolor floral patterns. That was combined with a balaclava and a satin bra, both covered in sequins; butterfly printed tights; and colored fake fur mules. Every look incorporated at least a couple of these layering techniques, with flowers, stripes, polka dots and smiley faces. The final look, a petticoat dress with lace and fake fur inserts, was embellished with endless smileys. “Mixing art and fashion is essential for me,” said Qiu. “It’s a way to tell the story of my joyous approach to work and life.”
26 February 2023
Shuting Qiu was born in Hangzhou, studied in Antwerp, presented her collections in New York and Milan, and now lives and works in Shanghai. For a 27-year-old it seems like quite a résumé, but it’s also a consequence of the pandemic, which forced her to revise her schedule and adapt to the situation, as it did for so many others. “Having had so many different experiences already is really formative; it has helped me better understand who I am and what I want to express with my clothes,” she said.Qiu is an artist, and that is clearly visible in her collections, including this one, shown inside a private home in the heart of Milan, complete with a greenhouse and parrots. It was an art-soaked space in which her looks full of brushstrokes, prints, and mash-ups came cheerfully to life. Passionate about painting since childhood, she cultivated her talent at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, famous for its experimental approach and for churning out many international fashion talents such as Martin Margiela, Demna, and of course the Antwerp Six. And it was from painting that Qiu began to develop her own approach to fashion design, eventually arriving at a mix of prints that has become her signature style.For spring she wanted to pay homage to the work of abstract painter Bernard Frize, in which color, applied in its purest version, is at the center. Qiu used the application of fringes in solid, ringing hues to reproduce the effect of the mix of broad, precise brushstrokes typical of Frize’s work. “The complexity of mixing colorations and patterns is definitely what fascinates me most in creating clothes,” she said.Upcycling seems increasingly inescapable in the work of the new generation of designers, probably because it is also part of their culture. Qui uses deadstock textiles salvaged from around the world, including vintage and leftover stock, but she does not limit herself to fabrics: She has also worked on a collaboration with Ugg, revising its boots through colorful appliqués. For spring she employed Swarovski crystals and stones to embellish petticoat dresses, tailored jackets, and straight skirts. The latter were the most special pieces in the collection, always shown with leggings and sweatshirts, another legacy of the pandemic period, which pushed Qui to seek a balance between a proposal close to the art world she loves and a more practical and casual one.
23 September 2022
“I dressed up everyday to go to school,” said Shuting Qiu on a Zoom call. Sixty days of lockdown in Shanghai didn’t sway her from that habit. “I still like to dress up, I think it’s the fun of fashion,” said the designer. A glimpse at her fall 2022 collection, which is bursting with color, texture, and mad mixes of fabric, is proof of that.Noting that many of her friends spent quarantine in casual sportswear, Qiu has made her first version of a hoodie, half of which is floral faux fur. It’s not something that could do double-time in the gym. In a similar vein, she collaborated with Uggs, reimagining the comfy boots by changing their soles and height, and glamming up the outers with hand-sewn sequins. Wide-leg jeans with snazzy side stripes are about as casual as this collection gets.In another life the designer might have been a painter. While she’s chosen to focus on fashion, she still begins each collection by putting paint to canvas, assembling collages, and crafting sculptures that help her define the palette and shapes. The most dramatic silhouette is a rounded plaid bolero trimmed with “fur.” Its colors and party mood were influenced by the work of the New York artist Florine Stettheimer. Qiu said she felt a connection with Stettheimer’s palette and style, which she described in the collection notes as ‘faux naïf’ and ‘rococo subversive.’ ”Qiu used to travel to collect inspiration; these days she’s discovering it closer to home, where she’s started working with local artisans. More than half of the pieces are made using deadstock fabrics, many of which have been embroidered (see the sunflower dress) and sequined. To temper the ebullient femininity of her designs, Qiu contrasts floral and lace patterns with “masculine” stripes and plaids. An example of this is a Prince of Wales check that’s embroidered with flowers, and has puffed plaid sleeves. Not something a minimalist would fall for, but what reads as “busy” to one person can be beautiful to another. These clothes have so much get-up-and-go energy that fans will likely invent occasions to wear them to rather than passively waiting for an occasion to arise.
16 June 2022
It’s common knowledge that designers often hire stylists to assemble the looks in their shows. The stylist functions as a second pair of eyes, lending their vision to the collection and putting items together that the designer might not have considered. Shuting Qiu operates differently: She styled every single look in her spring 2022 show in Shanghai, because she designed them as full, complete looks from the outset.The unexpected clash of colors and prints is Qiu’s calling card, so it’s easy to understand why she doesn’t design item by item; she doesn’t picture her clothes being worn any other way. If that sounds rigid, the results have a haphazard, freewheeling vibe, suggesting you can certainly wear her clothes myriad ways—mixed with your own favorite prints, or something as simple as jeans.Her process begins with collages, often a mash-up of her own paintings, art references found online, photos, and books. She then figures out her colors, prints, and embellishments and sketches the entire look from head to toe. For spring, that manifested in multi-patterned jackets over diaphanous floral dresses and plaid tights; abstract body stockings under short suits and crochet bras; bouclé minis over color-blocked knits and neon tights; and coats patchworked in varying florals, pinstripes, and bits of embroidery.Suffice it to say, these aren’t looks for blending in. Qiu’s singular approach has helped her standout in Shanghai’s ever-more-crowded emerging designer market; she’s been a finalist in multiple fashion prizes and counts Joyce, Labelhood, Browns, and Net-a-Porter as stockists. Even more impressive is that she only graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2019; most of her career has taken place in the pandemic.In another designer’s hands, clashing prints and colors might seem limiting; eventually, doesn’t your aesthetic have to evolve? But Qiu’s commitment to painting and drawing every single floral and stripe (60% of which are printed on deadstock fabrics) brings a kind of emotion that’s missing from perfect, mass-produced prints. As the brand grows, her main challenge—as is the case for most young designers—will be in continuing to refine her tailoring and construction.
15 October 2021