Chinese designers take center stage: London Fashion Week Spring Summer 2024 highlights

While London Fashion Week (LFW) may not hold the same cultural weight as its international counterparts, Paris Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week, the schedule is renowned for its investment in exciting Chinese talent. Every season, the calendar shines a spotlight on a plethora of Chinese heritage designers, both local and multinational, proffering them a space to showcase their visions and engage London’s fashion-focused crowd. This season however, saw a post pandemic boom with 18 designer labels showing this LFW. LFW has been the secret sauce behind the international rise of numerous Chinese visionaries, from prominent mainstays such as Simone Rocha, to emerging disruptors leading the fashion vanguard, such as Chet Lo, Susan Fang, and Feng Chen Wang. Whereas Paris, Milan, and New York favor luxury powerhouses, London thrives in creating new opportunities for the next wave of style arbiters who draw from heritage and explore the Chinese diaspora in their works. UK-based fashion support initiatives, such as the BFC Newgen program, have also helped contribute to the hotbed of Chinese creatives making it big in the Big Smoke. With the curtain having been drawn on LWF for another season, Jing Daily and Social media and influencer marketing agency Lefty break down the top 10 Chinese designers who showed up and showed out for the Spring/Summer 2024 calendar, using EMV metrics via Instagram. Simone Rocha Earned Media Value: $496k Calendar-fixture Simone Rocha had her cake, ate it, and wore it this season, with her dessert-inspired collection featuring tiered gowns and real roses embedded into sheer boned frocks. The brand's collaboration with cult-favorite clog label Crocs also brought eyes to Rocha's Spring Summer 2024 vision. Mithridate Earned Media Value: $69.3k Chinese-born designer and founder of Mithridate Demon Zhang focused on the fragility of material and delicacy in design in this season's debut show, all the while championing her East Asian heritage. Fresh palettes and artistic flourishes such as paint splatters provided key visual cues. Chet Lo Earned Media Value: $34.6k Lo’s trademark spiky, spunky silhouettes had a sexually-charged upgrade this season as the Chinese-American creative explored his turbulent relationship with his own sexuality after growing up around conservative Chinese ideals. Susan Fang Earned Media Value: $22.9k Piggybacking off of her previous Fall/Winter 2023 collection, Fang’s attention to detail secured her collection’s position as one of the top showcases of the week, with silhouettes enhanced by artificial intelligence to represent human DNA, otherworldly characters, and the ephemerality of nature. KWK by Kay Kwok Earned Media Value: $9.2k Hong-Kong born designer Kay Kwok rose to public prominence this year after catching the attention of stars including Beyoncé and Lil Nas X. This season, Kwok tapped into the alien allure of the intergalactic, bringing the bizarre and avant-garde to an otherwise conservative LFW season. Yuhan Wang Earned Media Value: $6.6k Inspired by Thomas Hardy’s heroine from Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Tess Durbeyfield, Chinese creative Yuhan Wang brought grown up polly pocket-core to the catwalk in the form of straw hats, strawberry-clad two pieces, alongside her own take on deconstructed lingerie. Buerlangma Earned Media Value: $6.1k One to watch on the LFW calendar, Buerlangma is striving to diversify the runway by modernizing cultural elements. This season, the brand’s digital show, dubbed ‘The Golden Age,’ explored the evolution of the gown through a new lens. J E Cai Earned Media Value: $1.3k After only two years since his namesake label joined the LFW calendar, J E Cai is solidifying its status as one of the most promising Chinese design brands. For Spring/Summer 2024, J E Cai delivered on modular pragmatism and functionality, looking to 1980’s Chinese military styles for inspiration. Permu Earned Media Value: $1.2k Heyun Pan, the brains behind newcomer Permu, reimagines menswear through contemporary attitudes, where garments take on new states and new forms to represent the contours of society. Permu’s latest collection also featured recycled and organic material and dyes, alongside bio-pigments made from wood. Ruirui Deng Earned Media Value: $1.2k Central Saint Martins graduate Rui Deng brought her eponymous label to London’s limelight this season, where the designer presented her ‘Ophelia’ collection via LFW’s DiscoveryLAB. It featured frilly layered skirts and lace slip dresses. All data insights provided by Lefty.io

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Chinese designers take center stage: London Fashion Week Spring Summer 2024 highlights