After two seasons displaying in Tokyo, Yueqi Qi introduced her assortment again to her native China, staging an off-calendar present on the primary evening of Shanghai Style Week. The designer described her assortment as her very personal “Journey of the Valkyries.” And whereas this nod to the Richard Wagner epic aligns together with her thought of a bunch of Yueqi Qi-clad heroines preventing the pervasiveness of the URL in hopes to return to life IRL, one can’t assist however place this depiction of a return to Valhalla towards her personal homecoming.
The Guangzhou-based Qi launched her label in 2019 after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2018 and slicing her enamel as an intern on the Chanel embroidery atelier. She was a semifinalist for the LVMH Prize in 2022, and one of many rising labels chosen by Alessandro Michele to be a part of the primary version of Gucci Vault. Qi’s interplanetary biomorphic aesthetic, with intricate floral fabrications made up of a whole lot of laser minimize petals, has turn into well-liked with celebrities—followers embody FKA Twigs and Blackpink’s Lisa, for whom the designer made a painstakingly embellished corset for Coachella in 2023. Enjoyable truth: Qi’s work featured in a few seems to be on the inaugural Vogue World in New York again in 2022. Evidently, Yueqi Qi may be very a lot a factor.
And so it must be no shock that when Qi put a name out to her clients and requested them to donate their garments for an upcycled venture inside this assortment, they confirmed up in droves. They donated every little thing from denims and sweaters to outdated headphones. What Qi understands properly and is aware of to leverage is an idea that usually eludes lots of her counterparts: neighborhood. “They had been excited to take part as a result of it’s a special means of being part of the model,” Qi stated at her showroom. Plus, they’ll all have the bragging rights to say that what they may have seen as trash Qi noticed as worthy of turning right into a runway-worthy treasure.
The headphones in query, lots of which got here from airways, stated Qi, had been separated by colour and braided and knitted into intricate floral ornaments and jewellery. The knits had been unraveled and re-knitted into playful crochet flower attire, and the denim and the remainder of the clothes had been laser minimize into hearts and layered over one another and items of recycled plastic to create Qi’s floral wonders. Adidas supplied sneakers, which Qi deconstructed for the present to drive her upcycling storyline ahead (they had been cool and covetable, it is a budding partnership Adidas ought to pursue as a proper collaboration). Most outlandish was the best way through which Qi included Apple Watches into her opulent jewellery, encrusting them in crystals and utilizing them in lieu of treasured stones.
Qi has made a reputation for herself for the best way through which she merges the pure with the futuristic, however her imaginative and prescient is equal elements timeless in its ingenuity and completely now in its wearability. Be it a space-y headphones headdress, a pink carpet-ready cascading laser minimize floral frock, or a pair of fabulous denims to go to the shop in, Qi is making her model the style Valhalla for up to date Valkyries.
