Analyzing a Yueqi Qi show is enough to make a critic feel like a scientist presented with an alien specimen. The Guangzhou designer’s biomorphic clothes, though wearable, appear almost insect-like in their intricacy, and even her color choices are unearthly (take the strangely iridescent blue that she used on the sheer cat print dresses, or the queasy, faded yellow in the leather looks).
The show took place in an old-fashioned Tokyo dance hall, with models descending a spiral staircase onto a large stage before circling the room. The setting lent a subtle cabaret tone to the collection, which was rich with romance in the complications of lace, embellishments, and laser cut macramé that Qi has made her trademark (she began her career interning in Chanel’s embroidery atelier).
There were silky pajama pants, lace-covered sailor tops, and corsetry, while football jerseys and frilly cargo pants added to the toughness, and the wearability. There were a few men’s looks too, in the striped and sheer camp collar shirts, which was a new move for Qi. Her aesthetic is rooted in feminine confidence—dressing for yourself rather than for others—so why not invite the boys to join in on the fun?
Qi titled her collection ‘Equinox.’ She wanted audiences to glean what they could from the show (there was intentionally no press release, and she wasn’t doing interviews). The title provided a clue as to what was going on: a play on light and dark, good and evil. It read as a kind of Paradise Lost told through the cypher of feminine edginess that Qi adeptly threads through her work. Biblical references came in the form of seraphim wings in beige and white, and a intricate devil-red dress complete with a sharp leather corset and enormous wings.
Though the devils and angels were a familiar reference, nothing about the pieces felt derivative, so otherworldly were they in their macramé construction. The styling helped: some models had wisps of hair fashioned into devil horns, their ears covered with wire walkman headphones in a typical Yueqi Qi Y2K throwback, that brought them partly back into the real world. Call it retro-celestial.
