Dear Shaded Viewers,
My friend Jeffrey Ying, the Beijing-based writer and arbiter of elegance, has submitted this piece on a young Chinese menswear designer. It's really sexy and I love the show location.
Ciao,
Glenn Belverio
China has no shortage of young designers but there are only a few that can manage to draw a first show audience of not just the usual fashion editors but also media powerhouse Hung Huang and the prominent Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei.
Ai Weiwei
Beijing-based designer Marimo Hsiang–who studied at the French-backed Esmod–held his first show at an unlikely venue, an underground aquarium in Beijing, and focuses on menswear.
His most recent 2013 Spring/Summer collection was inspired by the 2009 film "Invictus", a film which has rugby as a main theme; this influence shows itself in the athletic overtures, and slight homoeroticism evident in the fit and materials used such as mesh. Indeed, the notoriously sexy French calendar, "Dieux du Stade" (which featured French rugby players in various Bruce Weberian states of undress) was another inspiration.
More innocuous muses came in the form of two rugby trophies: The Webb Ellis Cup and The Calcutta Cup.
Marimo Hsiang will be on his way to Paris in 2013 to pursue a postgraduate degree in Creative Couture at the Esmod Paris.