When Chet Lo was a kid growing up in New York City, he was enchanted by images of the Terracotta Army, the collection of thousands of funerary sculptures dating back two millennia unearthed by farmers in China’s Shaanxi province in the 1970s. Most fascinating, he remembers thinking, was how the processes of oxidation, fire, and dehydration had transformed them along the way—their original, colorful lacquered surfaces fading to the earthy hues we see today. For Lo, that process of deterioration is exactly what lends them their exquisite, poetic beauty. “I always thought of the Terracotta Army as a symbol of strength and resilience,” he said backstage after his show today. “I was bullied a lot in school, and so this collection was really about putting on your armor to go out and face the world.”
To achieve this, Lo imagined the sculptures as if reawakening from their slumber, the clay shaken off to reveal a steelier surface underneath. And if there’s one thing Lo knows, it’s how to wake people up: the show began with the space being plunged into darkness, followed by a thunderous torrent of traditional Japanese war drums booming out across the runway. The opening look was as arresting as the soundtrack: a tweedy crop top and trousers that twisted at the knee were overlaid with what at first appeared to be a kind of crimson snakeskin print, that Lo explained afterwards served to resemble the crackling surfaces of his imagined terracotta soldiers as they woke from their slumber. “That’s why we had the metallic tears [as makeup] too,” he added. “This idea of them kind of cracking and melting.”
Naturally, Lo’s signature durian popcorn top spikes came in a variety of iterations: running along the sides of hoodies and trousers and fishtail skirts, or streaked down the back of a top for a note of stegosaurus chic. But it was his ventures into more elevated, mature pieces that felt most compelling: a series of looks crafted from a feather-light metallic knit lace carried a gorgeous shimmer, offering both a figure-hugging flattery and a sense of practicality that recalled the kind of beloved Issey Miyake pleated piece you can scrunch up in your suitcase and still wear on a night out in another city—no ironing needed.
A series of diaphanous knit gowns featured panels of gossamer-thin laddering sliced into skirts and running up the lengths of the arms, while the dazzling final look was covered in hand-sewn metal dragon scales inspired by historical Chinese armory. Once the model walked past, however, the cheeky bumster cut of the back of the dress was revealed. (Following Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s Mapplethorpe-inspired collection in New York last week, bumsters are already emerging as something of a trend this season; it will be interesting to see whether they factor into Seán McGirr’s vision for McQueen next month.) The theme of this collection may have stemmed from the designer’s childlike wonder at the mysteries of the Terracotta Army, but you can’t do Lo without a bit of skin, after all.
