“Was this the very best style present ever executed in Shanghai?,” friends puzzled as they walked into Dion Lee’s fall 2024 present. The semi-surprise (extra on that later) presentation was hosted on the a hundredth flooring of the Shanghai Monetary Heart, one of many tallest buildings in China.
After celebrating a decade of exhibiting at New York Trend Week, Lee needed to interrupt the rhythm of the high-octane, larger and louder reveals that we had come to anticipate from him. The unique plan was to indicate the gathering in New York in a extra intimate setting; maybe on the house of his future retailer on Mercer avenue, which has been at a standstill due to logistical difficulties. “However the finish of final yr was so congested and busy that the fact of specializing in one thing like this [a show] for February, proper after Christmas, was unrealistic,” mentioned Lee. Simply in that month of December, he celebrated a retailer opening in Miami throughout Artwork Basel, then unveiled a brand new Australian flagship in Melbourne. “One thing needed to give,” he added. With ten years underneath his belt, he mentioned, additionally got here the boldness to skip a NYFW season and look elsewhere.
Lee has cemented himself as one in every of Australia’s most profitable style exports, and his presence stateside is plain (see Taylor Swift in one in every of his knit corsets on the Tremendous Bowl). The designer had deliberate a visit to China in 2020 to satisfy his patrons and retailers, nevertheless it acquired scrapped within the onset of the pandemic; with the launch of a Lunar New 12 months capsule in Shanghai earlier this yr got here the thought of revisiting that plan and activating within the metropolis. Though many Western manufacturers are eager to make themselves felt in China with a myriad occasions starting from events to exhibitions; Lee needed to make a mark relatively than develop into a footnote in a busy season.
And so simply as golden hour struck, Lee’s star and hearth motifs of the season shot throughout the sky as fashions crossed the all-glass observatory, framed by a panoramic view of Shanghai’s breathtaking skyline. Inserting such celestial components towards the sky was pure serendipity, however that’s about all Lee left to likelihood right here. This was a well-edited and exact outing for the designer.
As regular, Lee riffed on a singular idea this season—the flame—and rendered it in an abundance of compelling fabrications. “It’s a logo of creation and destruction,” Lee defined, including he had thought of the flame for each its magnificence and treacherous methods. The gathering started with a star-shaped criss-cross lapel, then moved into interpretations of the flame motif; printed on grungy tie-dye clothes, woven into intricate laces (one in every of which was meticulously beaded), and distressed on loose-fitting denims. Lee dyed lucious fake fur coats—one in every of his fashions appeared like a literal fireball on the runway—and embossed flames on his leather-based jackets and on the padded protecting gear he employed as armor detailing to distinction his in any other case gossamer silhouettes.
Lee’s present was off-schedule and had gone unannounced till simply early this week. There was no ulterior motive for the secrecy apart from Lee and his crew being heads-down to tug the feat off. For sure they did. There was equal elements pleasure and curiosity in his crowd, a lot of which donned outfits by the model. Town appears good in head-to-toe Dion Lee, and Shanghai definitely appears good on Lee, too.
