Calvin Luo skipped the entire Paris Fashion Week this season. He has bigger plans. The designer opened his fourth store in China and the second in Shanghai earlier this year, and will open two more in the coming months. He is also in the early stages of planning his 10th anniversary next year. A homecoming show in China after years of performances in New York and Paris is not out of the question, although Luo did not get that far by showing his hand in one go.
Luo builds his collections like an editor would a fashion spread, so we don’t forget that he is the founder of Rouge fashion book China, the biennial print glossy. There’s always an underlying story behind his lineups, a common denominator of treatments or materials, and something unexpected to keep things interesting.
This season’s story: a study of the famous Italian sculptor Raffaele Monti Veiled lady (1845), which is revered for the artist’s masterful conveyance of the delicate cascade of fabric. The common factor: twists, folds and folds that decorate each piece. The curveball: Instead of focusing his sculptural efforts on chiffons and silks, Luo played with wool suits, technical fabrics, denim, knits, and even some distressed leather.
“Normally, when people talk about draping, they think soft,” Luo said during a walkthrough at his newest store, “but I wanted to play with all kinds of different fabrics. It was a challenge, but I think it looks quite interesting.” It does. His leather biker pants and curvaceous jeans are the kind of pants that the cool kids here in Shanghai line up for, while the little folds and pleats in the side seams of tailored minis and jackets adorned with built-in belts are likely to catch the eye of the ladies shopping across the street at Dior and Givenchy. Somewhere in the middle are Luo’s cashmere sweaters, some with double layers consisting of a tank top under a micro cardigan and others roomier and taped to the chest to create the illusion of bust cups. The most ambitious was his customization. The back of a thick, felted wool coat was twisted like a candy wrapper, both seductive and quirky, and a fabulous men’s blazer was cut with a high ’90s lapel and the right side was pulled tight and stretched to the left side seam. These would be tempting styling tricks on the pages of a magazine, but Luo has them built into his design.
Luo is a narrative designer, but his clothes hang just as attractively in his stores as in his lookbooks and on his catwalks.
