After two seasons exhibiting in Tokyo, Yueqi Qi introduced her assortment again to her native China, staging an off-calendar present on the primary night time 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 reducing her tooth 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 lots of of laser reduce petals, has change 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 reality: Qi’s work featured in a few seems to be on the inaugural Vogue World in New York again in 2022. Evidently, Yueqi Qi could 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 undertaking inside this assortment, they confirmed up in droves. They donated every part from denims and sweaters to outdated headphones. What Qi understands nicely and is aware of to leverage is an idea that usually eludes a lot of her counterparts: neighborhood. “They had been excited to take part as a result of it’s a distinct means of being part of the model,” Qi mentioned 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, a lot of which got here from airways, mentioned Qi, had been separated by shade 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 reduce 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 way in which wherein Qi integrated 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 way in which wherein she merges the pure with the futuristic, however her imaginative and prescient is equal components timeless in its ingenuity and completely now in its wearability. Be it a space-y headphones headdress, a pink carpet-ready cascading laser reduce floral frock, or a pair of fabulous denims to go to the shop in, Qi is making her model the style Valhalla for modern Valkyries.
